jensen1's reviews
427 reviews

Richard Wright was unbelievable. His wisdom, courage, and boldness to write and stay true to himself, a Black man, until the end was stunning. As an autodidact, his beautiful prose and profound thoughts truly show how brilliant this man was. 

Just reading other people’s reviews of this book shows how divisive it is- some think it’s too apologist and some say it’s fabrication / extremist. Some can’t believe that the author is American and not just flaying NK. 

However, my 3 star rating comes from a place of thinking Jeppeson was trying a bit too hard to be philosophical. I’m not saying the confrontation of his own ideologies compared to NK don’t deserve much reflection, but Jeppeson’s points don’t hit home as well as I’d have expected. For example - he correctly points out that westernized nations do not and do not want to report anything positive coming out of NK but then spend the entirety of the book telling us how bad it is there. While I would never deny that South Korea and the US probably do plenty to inflate hardship and stupid rumors (like everyone needing Jong Un’s haircut), there is little that seems to be positive for the average North Korean and Jeppeson acknowledges that. 

Some of his “profound” conclusions seemed a bit childish to me - thinking he was immune to bias in his writing at first despite being American felt juvenile - as an American myself, I’m always hyper aware of it when in other countries and I would expect to be crushingly aware of it were I in North Korea! 

In addition, he makes a sweeping generalization that we tend to demonize people who hold different values than us - which is true, to a degree. However, besides the Kim family which is, in my opinion, exempt from pity, I don’t think North Koreans as a people are bad? I think their system of oppression makes me care for them on a human level. I don’t think it takes a lot of nuance to realize that individual people are not their governments and I appreciate that understanding myself from others that may oppose current US administration abroad. Therefore, I can apply it to people of all different countries. North Korean people are three dimensional individuals that think and feel differently just like anyone else. 

As much as I agree that North Koreans have limited freedom and resources compared to a lot of folks in the western countries, I also disagree with Jeppeson’s conclusion that it’s hard for us to empower them. I’m not sitting here living a lavish lifestyle because of capitalism. I’m here watching the world burn because of it. Do I have freedoms they are not afforded ? Sure, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t struggling and can’t ever comprehend getting screwed over by greedy upper class politicians and elites. 

Maybe I’m just rambling at this point, but I do think reading this in 2025 makes me reflect that the average citizen life is at the whim of their government - western or eastern ideology be damned. We should all be a little more sympathetic to each other - we’re all just a bunch of nobodies.