Woman of Interest: A Memoir

O’Neill, who was adopted from South Korea when she was an infant, initially had no desire to learn about her birth parents. Growing up in New England with a boisterous Irish American family, her firecracker personality and unconventional philosophy of life saw her reach her mid-30s with a PhD, teaching at Vassar and having authored two novels: The Hopeful and Quotients. When COVID swept the world, she quarantined with in her Brooklyn apartment and read news articles about older South Koreans left to die alone. This sparked an investigative journey to find O’Neill’s birth parents and ensure they did not meet the same fate. Told through a stream-of-conscious narrative style, her memoir includes obscure vocabulary choices and nonlinear tangents, which might confuse some readers. Others, however, will embrace her memoir, which resembles what experimental jazz would be like if it were a written narrative. Funny, shocking, and emotionally charged, the memoir takes readers on her journey of self-discovery and finding what family means.