2.5 stars
Pro:
* unique opportunity to hear a first-hand account of historical people and events
* blend of perspectives, it is valuable to see frameworks other than our own

Con:
* inconsistencies in the prose
* a feeling of judgmentalism in places, despite the claims to the contrary. Sometimes “methinks thou dost protest too much.”

I am not the right audience for a book like this and because of that I will be unable to review this. I did read the whole thing [very reluctantly at the end] and after a discussion with someone else who read the book, I realized that me, in my own experience, am not someone who should have read this [though I had no idea of that going in]. I am grateful for the opportunity to read this and am glad to have one more crossed off the RAtW list.

Thank you to NetGalley, Monica Macias, and Duckworth Books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting book, giving a different and very personal perspective on growing up and living in different countries and cultures.
I found her time in North Korea in particular food for thought as I am used to viewing it from a western perspective. I imagine though her experience as a privileged person (her classmates were chosen to be a similar height to her so she didn't feel awkward?) was very different to the ordinary citizen.
I'm not sure if this was a translated book, or written in English by the author, but I found her style, particularly any conversation, really stilted and difficult to read
Thank you to netgalley and Duckworth for an advance copy of this book

Thanks ever so much to @duck_books for sharing this title with me on @netgalley!

Black Girl from Pyongyang by Monica Macías.

The biggest of sighs. This book had so much potential to be uniquely insightful, but it just didn't work for me and it feels cruelly personal of me to say this but it's Macias' grating narrative voice and flimsy value system that I couldn't hack.

As the daughter of Francisco Macias, the first president of Equatorial Guinea following its independence from colonial Spanish rule, and as someone who grew up in North Korea, then proceeded to live in Madrid, New York, London and Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, this had the makings of a fantastic social and political tour-de-force. However, for the most part, her observations only ran skin deep and felt like incredibly biased and misplaced generalisations.

Of course, our judgements are almost always informed by our lived experiences, but it felt almost risible to me that Macias spends longer criticising Spanish border control staff than, I dunno, at least some of North Korea's policies towards its own citizens? Or her father's own rule over Equatorial Guinea? Or even the fact that the current President of Equatorial Guinea is her uncle, only the country's second ever president? For example, the North Korean famine of the mid-nineties only has a few lines devoted to it and there is no critical assessment of any of the misfortunes that befell any of her fellow citizens in either country. Did I expect her to go all out criticising her own father and her protector, Kim Il-sung? Well, no, given what we come to learn about her through her own writing, but I know other people would have been capable of doing so.

This may sound harsh, but whenever she does try and expose her value system, her prose is reminiscent of an undergraduate-level politics essay. Grand statements that mean very little, waffly overarching generalisations, 'love don't hate'-style statements... such a missed opportunity, so many glaring omissions, and yet a lot of time is devoted to her time as a Leroy Merlin employee - only Spanish readers and/or anyone sufficiently acquainted with the Spanish home furniture market will realise how bonkers that sentence is.

2.5/5

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.

While I didn't always agree with her conclusions, I did really appreciate her writing. Her experiences have shaped her perspectives, and that can't be discounted.

This is a book just calling to be discussed in book clubs. If you're interested in the history or politics of North Korea or Equatorial Guinea, this will be an intriguing book to read.

“My connection to the society I grew up in is partly emotional, but I do have the capacity for dispassionate legal analysis. The moment that emotion interferes with analysis, the analysis can become sloppy.”

Macias is the daughter of the late Francisco Macias, the erstwhile leader (/dictator) of Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, which attained its independence from its coloniser Spain in 1968.

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.

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.

In a short space of time, she began to identify as Korean, speaking the language fluently and making many Korean friends. When she came of age, she was offered the chance either to stay or leave, and in the book she documents her decision to live and discover her heritage in Spain and Equatorial Guinea, before moving to the US, South Korea and the UK.

It’s an interesting book and Macias has clearly led a very interesting life. The above quote though by Macias, referencing her experience of academic analysis of the North Korean regime, sums up my main gripe with the book.

Macias allows her own experience, and her experience alone, to determine her thoughts and opinions on North Korean society.

Her lack of objectivity makes for a poorer book: ultimately this is a pretty superficial analysis of a happy childhood in North Korea. It’s a memoir and a quick read, but you can expect little critical thinking on Communism, famine, nuclear power and the Kim dynasty. I mean, for a start, you can’t actually leave North Korea, so there’s that. 2/5 ⭐️

*Many thanks to the author, the publisher @duckworthbooks and @netgalley for the advance copy of the book, which was published on Thursday. As always, this is an honest review.*

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.

Monica was seven years old when her father was killed. She had been Spanish-speaking, but lost her language and culture during her education (and, frankly, indoctrination) at the military boarding school she attended just outside of Pyongyang. This book is the story of her life from her earliest childhood memories, through her years in North Korea, her leaving, and later, as she made her way as a woman with a complicated identity. Her decision to leave was driven by her desire to see the outside world, to connect to her past, and to find out whether her father really was a cruel dictator.

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 her father, 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.

This book is fascinating on the level of the uniqueness of Macias’s rather improbable perspective, with wonderful biographical details. It was delightful to read about her childhood, and I could empathise with her painful circumstances. She even had me feeling for the children of the former leader of my own country, because yes, it is true that the family becomes collateral damage. However, Macias’s frequent declamations and the solutions she advances for fixing the world, when she stands on her soapbox, are far less interesting, and most of my notes on these are on how perplexing bias can be to those watching.

This is an excellent read. Many of my fellow Goodreads readers are offended by the fact of her being, and by the sheer effrontery of her advancing her view on things; I, however, am not. I think there is much value in her entreaty to consider the perspective we use to judge world leaders, because, as she points out, history is written by the victor (or, perhaps, in the case of North Korea, by the all-powerful Superpower), sometimes to the detriment of real progress. However, I did find myself sneering, too, at her attempts to sanitise the images of her two fathers: we all know that if the devil is your bestie, you’ll be moved to comment on his cute curls and how he used his fork to help plough your field that one time you really needed help. In other words, no one is truly the caricature that those who demonise them claim; but that can never mean they have not committed–or are not able to commit–atrocities. Macias cannot be blamed for speaking for those she cares for or loves.

I enjoyed this for its honesty, for her remarkable and truly fascinating story, for the insight she provides into life in North Korea, for the spotlight, however flawed, on Equatoguinean life, and for her perspective on life as an eternal migrant in Spain, the US, the UK, South Korea, and other places. There are many highlights, and I loved that she included so many photographs. Her account of her first visit to China from North Korea is hilarious, and sad. In all, Macias is a brave and complex woman, and I’d love to invite her to that hypothetical dinner party.

Absolutely read this.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Duckworth Books for this excellent ARC.

Thank you to the author, Duckworth Books and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a fascinating starting point this is for a memoir - the author is uniquely positioned to give insight into two countries and cultures that are for the most part closed off to scrutiny by outsiders. She herself however also suffers under the burden of what nowadays is called being a third-culture-kid, belonging to neither the culture she was born into nor the culture she grows up in. Unfortunately, the writing in this memoir never really rises above a naive recounting of the author's daily life, with little self-awareness, reflection or critical thinking. While I understand her desire to connect with her father's history and explore the real events behind his time as president (rather than the official version), the fact that history is written by the victors is not new and should not come as a surprise - and discovering anomolies in official accounts does not make a diametrically opposing view the truth. This book may have suffered from being a translation from the original Korean, but I wish the author had done more with the amazing life story she has to tell - and had explored more clearly the troubling history of two corrupt dictators that she portrays as essentially misunderstood benevolent rulers.

It took me a while but I finally got around to finishing Black Girl from Pyongyang. Macias put together an interesting book about the ripple effects of a postcolonial legacy. I still found it difficult to read because at the end of the day, I can see the person who had the kind of life described in the book having drinks with another child of a dictator like Imee or Bongbong Marcos and commiserating about how they/their fathers are viewed as evil, paid with funds that came from mystery bank accounts. The globetrotting lifestyle she presents in the book does not line up with how others from other subaltern countries have struggled to get through the world. It must be nice to be so privileged. (I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.)

Black Girl from Pyongyang Monica Macias

3 stars

I originally requested this book because I am fascinated by North Korea and thought that I would learn more this mysterious country.

The author is the daughter of Francisco Macias, the president of Equatorial New Guinea, another country that I know nothing about, and had sent his daughter Monica to be brought up and educated in North Korea under the guidance of Kim II Sung at the age of 8.

However the book described Monica’s schooling, including the University of Light Industry in Pyongyang, her travelling and her various jobs but without going into any detail about her day to day life which I found disappointing.

Her father was assassinated when Monica was still young. He was accused of being a murderer and of committing many atrocities and a lot of her book details her efforts to try and exonerate him but again there did not seem to be any obvious evidence.

Her life is obviously very interesting but she seems to have missed the chance to give us details of what is obviously an extremely interesting life and it is more just brief descriptions of what she did from year to year.

I feel that this book is a missed opportunity for the author to really give us an insight into both her childhood in North Korea and the real details of what happened in Equatorial New Guinea. However it was still worth a read but it could have been so much more.



Karen Deborah
Reviewer Netgalley

I found this book to be fascinating, since I like to broaden my mind, and learn about how other people look at our world. We all have our own backgrounds and perspectives, and these naturally affect how we look at the world. The author has lead an intriguing life, and has had the possibility to live in so many places, and constantly gain knowledge of different countries and cultures.

Granted, the author comes from a privileged background, and she has not lived the life of a typical Equatoguinean or a North Korean for that matter, but due to this she has shown immense courage and a huge interest in finding out what it means to be a person from her background. Trying to understand the world and finding one's own way are important things, and if you have the chance to do it the way the author did it, then that is just amazing.

I like to remind readers that the author is not trying to show the world the truth and the only truth, but she is giving the reader an opportunity to soak in how other people might see the world. Not everything anyone of us have learned in school and during our upbringing is the ultimate truth. We all need to try to understand other people better, and not simply let everyone know we have the only right knowledge, and everyone else is wrong. Isn't that one of the reasons the world is what it is today?

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.

I highly recommend this book to people who want to broaden their understanding regrading other people, as well as people who really should get out of their comfortable zone, as well as people who think they know everything and are superior to others (I doubt they get the point of the book though). Some more editing would have been good to ease out some oddities in the storytelling and continuity. I am also wondering how it seems to easy to just move from country to country. I might be wrong, but I would think it would take a lot of time and effort to do this, and especially since the author has not worked in well-paid jobs, she seems to be able to fly a lot. If there is some explanation to this, I want to know! I want to do it too!

Monica Macias’ life is interesting. Born the youngest daughter of Francisco Macias, the first president of Equatorial Guinea, she was transported to Pyongyang aged seven in 1979 as her father requested his friend Kim Il Sung to educate Monica and her two older siblings there. Months after she began living in Pyongyang, her father was overthrown in a coup d’état and she was to begin what will be a 15-year period of life growing up in Pyongyang during her formative years. Kim Il Sung honoured the wish of his late friend by ensuring that all of Monica’s needs were taken care of and overseeing her education in the North Korean education system.

I’ll have to admit my lack of knowledge about the history of Equatorial Guinea might hinder me from wholly understanding Monica’s narrative. But in terms of message, Monica is pretty clear in her memoir about the need to view issues from multiple perspectives and understand both North Korean and Equato-Guinean struggles in relation to the decolonisation process. The title and synopsis are captivating. A black girl – who naturally would come from a country in Africa or the Pacific – and Pyongyang, which is the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – a country now commonly reported in the mainstream media as a rogue state pursuing its nuclear ambition at the expense of its own people. After the end of history, both countries do not find themselves in a favourable light in the international community, with their infamous track records in human rights and economic development.

Granted, this memoir is not only about life in North Korea as the portion of Monica’s life in North Korea only covers around one-third of the book and she lived a highly privileged life in the DPRK, so it’s not easy to view the daily life of North Koreans from her story. Yet this is a book about someone’s search for her identity (born from parents of Afro-European descent yet growing up in an East Asian country) and the need to establish truth based on meticulous research after seeing the viewpoints on both sides. Probably the latter is the most difficult thing to perform (even for readers with open minds), as it’s natural that our views would gravitate towards one view or another. Monica’s views on the human rights situation are also something that I regret a bit, given her educational background for someone who studied international relations and African politics at SOAS in London, yet I find her courage to challenge the established narratives that she learned during the time she grew up admirable.

While Monica’s stories focus more on her uneasy feelings growing up rather than established facts, I find them insightful in terms of understanding the complexities of global migration and questions on identities. And with memoir, it is essential to understand that there is always some degree of subjectivity as Monica interprets the way the western world in general views Francisco Macias and Kim Il Sung. While the book also offers alternative viewpoints, I understand that it lacks depth, which perhaps has something to do more with Monica’s intention of describing her life story rather than providing detailed research on either her life in DPRK or the question of identity that has been surrounding her. I find this book in general an interesting and concise memoir but I would not take it as an authoritative source of information.

I am intrigued by the editorial process that must have been the undertaking of this book. From concept or follow through, I imagine it was a heady business and I do not envy Macias' publishing team. I 'enjoy' narratives of DPRK life, but this is not that. This is the story of someone who was raised in privilege and has not been able to take off the blinders of nostalgia. I appreciate her struggle as a fellow human, but I can't recommend buying it to read about.

I loved this memoir; it was hard to put down and it made me think.

Monica is a woman of many lives in a short time, she has lived in many countries and taken on many roles, but in her own story, as the story teller, she redefines what it means to grow aware of yourself and your place in this world. This memoir is about Monica Macias, daughter of the famed Francisco Macías of Equatorial Guinea, a man known to be the country’s first president from 1968 till 1979, when he was assassinated by his nephew. During this time of strife in her homeland, Monica was being educated in the North Korean education system under the guidance of her surrogate father, Kim Il Sung. During her time in North Korea, Monica became a dutiful student, a comrade, and was pushed to grow up quickly due to circumstances outside of her control. Alongside her, for a while, was her sister Maribel and her brother Fran, who both were also educated in Pyongyang with their sister.

I quite enjoyed this memoir and found it difficult to put down. Seeing North Korea in a pure way, as a student and resident, was a a beautiful contrast to how North Korea is depicted in the media. I went away feeling more informed than ever and as a Korean scholar, I am fortunate to add this book to my collection of North Korean literature. What else could I say about this book? I could say so much, in fact, but I rather you read it for yourself because I wouldn’t want to spoil it with my need to retell the whole story.

The penultimate chapter of Monica Macias’s Black Girl from Pyongyang opens with the following epigraph, from Dan Plesch: “In politics, what is not being said is often more important than what being said”. It is clear that Macias intends this to be a summary of her experiences with Western narratives surrounding her two homelands: North Korea and Equatorial Guinea. In reality, it is a summary of everything that is wrong with this memoir.

Black Girl from Pyongyang is pitched as a young woman’s struggle to make sense of her identity amidst her associations and relationships to controversial political figures. I was interested in the book both for its inside view of North Korea and the promised narrative of a journey of intense soul-searching and re-evaluation of one’s worldview. Except that soul searching never happens on any serious level. Macias’s entire journey of self-discovery seems to be that after leaving North Korea, she encounters a number of people who make disparaging comments about her father, Francisco Macias Nguema, and her quasi-foster father, Kim Il Sung, which hurts her feelings. She then apparently interviews over 3000 people to ‘find out the truth’ about her father and his political dealings, but the only two people whose testimonies are featured in the book are those of her mother and her father’s right hand man, which are both obviously positive. These testimonies are enough to reassure Macias, and close the door on her soul searching! She then embarks on a mission to tell everyone who criticises these figures that they have bought into a political narrative and don’t know the truth. The absence of any real engagement with the critical voices who oppose her worldview is glaring, and her relentless self-congratulation that she has somehow transcended politics – while writing a memoir that at times reads like the most egregious, surface-level political propaganda – is affronting. It's a real shame, because I went into this memoir with an open mind, wanting to hear how she came to terms with/made sense of the various narratives she found herself in the middle of; but there is little to no acknowledgment of anything that might challenge her worldview.

‘What is not being said’ here is extremely telling, as Macias unwittingly draws attention to through her epigraph. This epigraph is again indicative of the memoir in revealing her total lack of self-awareness of these omissions or how her narrative will read to anyone outside of her personal experience. Macias believes she has moved beyond black/white, good/evil narratives, yet her story continually falls back on the simplest possible version of events. She never entertains the idea that these men in her life might be complicated figures: good fathers and loyal friends, but bad and corrupt leaders, for example. Or that their political careers caused any harm, despite their many good intentions. Moreover, she seems to reject outright the possibility that she might not be able to arrive at a final, settled, true version of these politically contentious narratives. At the end of the novel, she reveals that she wrote her MA dissertation on why her father is innocent of the atrocities attributed to him, and – apparently – an ‘expert’ academic in Equatorial Guinea emails her to tell her that she is exactly right and her dissertation is basically irrefutable fact.

Any insight into her experiences or places she has traveled are surface-level at best, and focus entirely on her feelings or reactions to them. At worst this book is straightforward propaganda, at best it is a disappointing account of an interesting life by a woman who has some soul-searching left to do.

Thanks to Duckworth for the ARC via NetGalley.

I found this book very interesting. The author shared her perspective on growing up in North Korea. It is a different POV that what is usually represented in media aimed at western audiences. She states that she is presenting her experiences and is reluctant to present anything as fact when she has not actually experienced it for herself. Her approach feels very genuine. She has visited and lived in several countries, speaks multiple languages, and has held a variety of jobs. All of this she presents in a straight forward manner.
The author apparently grew up under somewhat privileged conditions in North Korea, as she was a ward of the then president/head of the country. Any mention of poverty, oppression, or other negative conditions a western reader may be expecting are conspicuously absent. I wonder if she never saw anything like this because she was not exposed to it, unaware of it, or if it simply did not exist. She did mention such conditions in her native African country.
Much of the book is about her search for the truth about her father, who was the president of Equatorial Guinea and had been accused of various crimes and executed when the author was young. She presented her findings that called everything she had been told into question.
Overall a very interesting read that offers an alternative POV.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is certainly one of the most unusual books I have read. I had no idea that African countries had sent their leaders' children to North Korea to be educated. That alone is illuminating. Monica has written an account of her upbringing which surprisingly or not surprisingly reeks of privilege, ignorance, innocence, and some amount of defensiveness. She tries to discover the good in her father who is known to be a ruthless dictator. I suppose every girl wants to love and admire her father. And she seems to have no idea that her life in North Korea was hardly indicative of the life of the other 98%.
Yet, it is her story, her propaganda, so to speak, and her truth. One can't help but feel a little sorry for her and how she's felt the need to justify so much of her life. I always appreciate different perspectives and this certainly provides one. She's a sympathetic character and one wants to like her, but in the end it just reeks of privilege and bias.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this unusual book. It's hard to know how to rate it, but it certainly provides food for thought.

I found this an absolutely fascinating book, hence my high rating, although it certainly has its flaws. It’s the remarkable story of Monica Macias, daughter of the first President of Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macias Nguema. Once the country achieved independence from Spain in in 1968, the country in effect was without allies or support and Macias turned to whoever would partner with him. One such supporter was Kim Il Sung in North Korea, with whom he forged a close relationship. As a consequence of this, Macias decided to send his children there, at the invitation and under the protection of Kim Il Sung, to be educated. Monica spent the years 1979 to 1994, from the age of 7, in Pyongyang, amongst a few other foreign students. Insulated from the harsh realities of life in other parts of North Korea, she remembers her time there fondly, even though separated from her mother and with the news of her father’s overthrow and execution reaching her shortly after her arrival. After graduation form University Monica left North Korea to embark on a peripatetic life wandering the globe trying to find her place in the world. An astonishing life indeed and I read it with enormous interest. It’s a personal memoir, of course, and Monica Macias is entitled to tell her own story in her own way. But it’s also a remarkably naïve memoir, with apparently no understanding of real-world politics, in spite of her constant assertion that we always need to discover the facts before making judgements about other countries and societies, and that we should always keep an open mind. True, of course, as far as it goes. And I wouldn't necessarily expect a daughter to condemn her own father, although to be wilfully blind to the actions of a man who was tried for genocide, mass murder, embezzlement of public funds and violation of human rights goes rather beyond familial loyalty. And although she lived in the Pyongyang bubble and growing up would quite likely have been unaware of the dire conditions prevailing in other parts of North Korea, once she left it wouldn’t have been difficult to discover the truth. I learnt a lot from this book, largely through reading around it rather than in it, as much that Monica Macias doesn’t address is available online. For a start I didn’t even know where Equatorial Guinea actually was. Mea culpa. But my goodness, if ever a book has to be read with a very sceptical mind, this is it, and although I highly recommend it, I suggest readers not be carried away by the engaging narrative but check the facts.

Having not known anything about these events, I found this absolutely fascinating. I thought Monica's upbringing in Korea sounded awful but, as she was so young, she seemed to accept this as the norm. I thought her comments about the West views North Korea and vice versa were pause for thought.

In 1979 seven year old Monica Macias along with her siblings, are sent from Equatorial Guinea to be raised in Pyomgyang, North Korea. They were sent by their father the first president of post-independence Equatorial Guinea, under the protection and guardianship of Kim Il Sung.

Monica tells her own personal story of how she grew up in privilege, in a North Korean military school, how she navigates her career struggles and choices after leaving North Korea, and how she seeks out 'her truth' & comes to terms with historical political atrocities, accusations and propaganda directed towards her father. Monica's story also highlights her strained relationship with her mother, and culture shock not only from the various countries she visits on her travels, but also when she returns to her home country of Equatorial Guinea, where she finds that she can't speak the language and has to re-learn her original culture as an adult.

I read this book from the perspective of reading about a little black girls difficult journey of being uprooted from her homeland, only to be thrown into a totally different culture and what transpired thereafter. I read it as it is written, from 'Monica's perspective', and I found it fascinating, interesting and informative. I do feel some readers will be outraged that Monica has a perspective other than what is 'taught', true or not, in Western society, and will give low ratings for this book based on their own political beliefs and prejudices. It is always good to be open to explore both sides of a story, and I would encourage everyone to read this book with an open mind.