Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity

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Monica spent a somewhat confused and happy childhood at a strict, military boarding school in Pyongyang, where she lived a relatively privileged existence as the daughter of a close comrade and friend of Kim Il Sung. North Korea in 1977. On her right: her biological father, Equatorial Guinea’s then president Macias. On her left: the North Korean founder Kim Il-sung.

Mónica Macías (born 1972) [ citation needed] is an Equatoguinean author. She is the daughter of the country's first president, Francisco Macías Nguema. [1] [2] She was raised in North Korea. What’s wrong with you? You know you cannot speak to me like that. I am older than you! You should respect those older than you,’ she said. Monica Macias is the youngest child of Francisco Macías Nguema (Masie Nguema Biyogo Ñegue Ndong), known as Macías, the first president of Equatorial Guinea, who was deposed in 1979, and later executed by firing squad. (In this write-up, Macias will refer to Monica Macias, the author.) Monica Macias had been sent to be the ward, along with her siblings, of Francisco Macías’s friend, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. On her father’s death, her mother, who had accompanied them, returned to Equatorial Guinea. Monica and her siblings were then educated and raised in North Korea, leaving only after they had each completed university. During the first half of the book, I was disappointed that there wasn't more information about the country of North Korea, its population, and what life was like there. This may be because the author lived a more privileged life under Kim Il Sun. The author however does write about other foreign friends, as she is not allowed to have lasting friendships with Koreans, and her school life. With his family’s life in danger from his putative enemies, and with Communist nations reaching out to offer Macias assistance, he sent his wife and children to North Korea to live and be educated under the stewardship of Kim Il Sung, who the author refers to as her adopted father, and of whom she speaks very fondly.After some 15 years in NK, the author leaves and begins a journey of discovery, living and travelling in various countries, including the US and Europe. She also seeks to find out more about her father and his time as President of EG. Her sources seem to be relatives and others sympathetic to her father. The views she hears may be biased or untruthful, coming sometimes from those complicit in her fathers administration. She seems ambivalent or at best forgiving towards her father’s behaviour and actions as President. It is useful to bear in mind that most modern sources view him as a brutal and corrupt dictator rather than a liberator from Colonialism. Macias considers that she had two fathers, both reviled by the world. She is Brown (self-identifying, as she is from an Equatoguinean father and a Spanish-Equatoguinean mother), yet she is culturally Asian, and Korean to be specific. She is completely dislocated from her father’s culture, except as she encountered it as an adult (and she hates the food, except for plantains). The memories of those closest to her of Francisco Macias, and their accounts of his rule, do not align with the world’s image of him, which she attributes to propaganda created by Equatorial Guinea’s former colonisers, the Spanish, and her father’s Equatoguinean enemies. At the beginning of the book, she promises to outline evidence that her father was not as bad as he was portrayed to be, and was rather the victim of circumstances, but she does not do this. Instead, she talks briefly about how people around him were killing innocent people in his name, without presenting evidence.

Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, looked after Macias and her two other siblings throughout their stay there. stars. A deeply intriguing and unique memoir of growing up in the Hermit Kingdom. Certainly the first I've read in defense of that state, and a reminder that we in the West are fed a very pejorative and slanted view that has little appreciation of the world from the North Korean point of view. My feisty attitude masked an acute sense of social rejection. I wanted desperately to blend in with my classmates, but their unspoken message seemed to be: ‘You are not Korean, you are not like us.’ Biology and history classes seemed geared to accentuate my difference. In history, we studied ancient Korea, from the Three Kingdoms era to the Koryŏ dynasty, the Chosŏn era to Japanese occupation. For a moment, my interest in my adoptive country would be piqued, until I would suddenly notice one of my classmates giving me a sly look that said, unmistakably: ‘This history has nothing to do with you.’ It was true. While for them this was the story of their grandparents and great-grandparents, for me it was just a class. A fascinating account of a woman's quest for autonomy, and her bravery and determination to find the truth. It's an investigative story to understand her true father, a powerful but controversial figure, the real man behind his many personas. A woman who was raised between countries, in search of her true home' Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father Not just your run of the mill memoir, it's the life story of a Guinean girl who grows up in North Korea, even more, the youngest daughter of the 1st President of independent Equatorial Guinea raised in North Korea under the protection of Kim Il-Sung... who keeps trying to find out who she is with her mixed identity while also trying to reconcile the two men so crucial in her life, who the world sees as horrific, with the direct experience of them she had.Monica's adventure continues when she settles in Spain, then New York, and then London, admirably determined (after her dogmatic education), not to believe anything until she'd seen it with her own eyes. As to North Korea, I feel very ambivalent about what she has to say. She liked it, misses it and I can understand that as it is home to her. I do wonder how being essentially pupil of the state has influenced her experience.. She received the media spotlight in 2013 when her memoir, I’m Monique from Pyongyang, was published in Korean.

It is an interesting story of post-colonialism, the Cold War and a certain North Korean life during the 1970s and 1980s. Hardly representative however and the author, although enjoying remarkable freedoms, seems ignorant to the circumstances of ordinary North Koreans. Her father is killed during the political chaos of post-colonial EG, in the early years of her time in NK. Yet she remains there, a guest of the government and grows up essentially Korean. She speaking the language, looses her Spanish and enjoying the food and lifestyle. Her mindset is very much positive towards her adopted country and she sees little to fault. While of course, being critical of the West and naturally the United States. I like how personal this book is. I felt like I got to know the author. She is not afraid of realizing she is wrong, or that there are things she does not know, and she is not afraid of letting other people know that the way they see the world is not the whole truth either. You won't find a recounting of atrocities or a political discussion on the merits or demerits of such complicated places as North Korea or a country immersed in post colonial dynamics like Equatorial Guinea, but her story is full of daily life experiences, with highs and lows, with lovely friendships and bittersweet memories, of real people living in real places even if that place is Pyongyang.

Despite the layered obstacles, Macias says she has fond childhood memories of her school life and classmates. Being open to all sides of a narrative, as she often mentions she is, does also mean looking into the narratives that do not favour your family. The hypocrisy is striking and hence I did not like her analysis of her father's history and take on the world. This is not to say she is wrong in all respects but she should have included more nuance in her analysis to consider more sides of her fathers reign.

Fascinating memoir. Monica Macias has led a very interesting and unexpected life, from growing up the daughter of a man remembered as a brutal dictator of Equatorial Guinea to being raised in North Korea under the protection of Kim Il-sung to her humble travels around the world to better understand her identity. I had not heard from my father or Teo since we left Malabo. According to my sister – though I do not remember the moment – after a few months, my mother suddenly announced that she had to return to Equatorial Guinea. We were to be sent to the Mangyŏngdae Revolutionary Boarding School in the eponymous district of Pyongyang, some thirty minutes southwest by car of the city centre.In 1979, Monica Macias, aged only seven, was transplanted from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea. She was sent by her father Francisco, the first president of post-Independence Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung. Within months, her father was executed in a military coup; her mother became unreachable. Effectively orphaned, she and two siblings had to make their life in Pyongyang. At military boarding school, Monica learned to mix with older children, speak fluent Korean and handle weapons on training exercises. Monica's is an evocative memoir of a remarkable childhood followed by a decades-long search around the globe for her identity and the truth about her father. But beyond that, it is a stunning treatise on politics, power and culture' Florence Olajide, bestselling author of Coconut Today, Monica Macias lives in a south London suburb and works on the shop floor of a well-known clothes chain. No customer could even begin to guess her extraordinary childhood divided between two countries that were among the worst in terms of political rights and civil liberties, effectively parentless from the age of 7 and brought up in a military boarding school.