Wall Down Ramallah (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781967202041)

Born in Seoul, Korea, Minyong Cho immigrated to California when she was 16. In 2007, then 32 years old, she moved to the West Bank to finish her PhD dissertation in Islamic art history. There, one question about her past gnawed at her: why did she experience abuse as a child but not her sister? In Wall Down Ramallah, Cho alternates memories of Korea with her life in Palestine, eliciting feelings of being completely and permanently outside any "home." In liminal spaces like the Qalandia military checkpoint and the haunted hallways of a Jerusalem dormitory, and through the thin walls of the houses she moved through, she pieced together what her parents might have been hiding behind closed doors. The result of her profound, heartbreaking obsession with her personal history is Wall Down Ramallah.