[The Baking Typewriter] Flowing Even When Broken... Returning to Myself from the Depths of Despair

New Release: "The Chronology of Water"
First Korean Publication of American Author Lidia Yuknavitch's Memoir
Domestic Violence, Neglect, Drugs, Divorce, and Loss
The Journey of Finding Myself After Losing My Life
"Pain is not something to overcome, but something to flow with"

Dall-E 3

"Overcoming the small tragedies of life and continuing on is arduous. Tragedies fall deep into a large sinkhole in the brain, only to resurface and swell in between."

The memoir "The Chronology of Water" (original title: The Chronology of Water·The Days I Held My Breath), written by American author Lidia Yuknavitch in 2011, has been published in Korea for the first time. If you open the book expecting the familiar narrative of success and recovery, as is common in most autobiographies, you may be quite taken aback. Like expecting a sparkling sea with moist air and white sand, only to be hit by waves with your whole body, the story flows in unexpected directions. Within it are uncomfortable, dark, and at times, unbearably raw emotions.

Lidia's life was a series of despair. Horrific abuse at the hands of her father, the helpless neglect of her mother who struggled with alcoholism and depression, and an older sister who could not endure such parents and left home. Even in the water, her only sanctuary, she ultimately could not hold on. Drugs that stole her future as a swimmer, dropping out of college twice, divorce, and a daughter who died at birth... Her life continued to spiral downward. The life of a child raised in a broken home was, in the end, shattered to pieces.

However, this book is not simply a confession of misfortune. Even though her life repeatedly sank, she endured at the very bottom. She stared into the darkest riverbed of existence, embraced her pain, spoke within it, recorded it, and flowed like water. This book contains the fierce journey of an author who endured the waves of violence, addiction, loss, and self-destruction, submerged in the abyss of "nothingness," and eventually rose again as herself. It holds fragments of life drawn from the memories of a torn body, and the honest breath of a person who faced them just as they are.

"Some waves in life cannot be avoided, and some wounds never fully heal."

The work declares: Even torn beings can still flow. Despite everything, we can change shape like water and continue to flow, even while broken. Pain is unavoidable, but a life that flows with that pain is still possible. This is not a story that digs deeper into despair, but rather one about those who refuse to give up their flow even within despair. It may not be surrender, but another way of survival.

This book, which shows how one person's pain becomes sentences and how those sentences become tools for survival, is also a solidarity among those who embrace pain. It offers comfort and courage to those who have lost direction in life, those who are wounded, and those who wish to write themselves anew. Lidia's voice, which says she did not so much "overcome" pain as "flowed with it," sometimes comes in rough, unrefined language, and sometimes in unfiltered emotion, embedding itself deep in the reader's heart.

Perhaps the days spent holding one's breath were, in the end, a time to prepare for the beauty of all that eventually rises to the surface. Even if we are broken, we can face the world and flow like water. Beautiful things, graceful things, and fragments of hope often bloom from the darkest places?just like Lidia's sentences.