I attended the launch for Haro Lee’s Watching Television in a Love Motel last night and it was such a fun, exciting evening. Hosted at a bookstore, this launch brought the bad a bougie to a book release, and really felt like we were bringing this book in with a bang. Split into four sections, this book goes through so many emotions and really feels like you’re watching a show.

Watching Television in a Love Motel contains themes of drug use, sex, unhealthy relationships, family, aged care, caring for someone with dementia, and gentrification. Some of these themes may not resonate or appeal to all readers, while others may be triggering. Reader discretion is advised.

In this unforgettable first book of poetry by Haro Lee, television – like love – binds us and liberates us; inspires, infuriates and illuminates us. Watching Television in a Love Motel is a poetic chronicle of Haro’s time in Aotearoa, South Korea and the United States of America. In four parts – ‘Daytime Television’, ‘Primetime Television’, ‘Late Night Television’, and ‘Graveyard Slot’ – she looks at her past, family and self with the help of the unwavering cultural force that is TV. Big subjects are caught in its glow: God, drugs, love, anti-motherhood, intergenerational trauma, loneliness, failure, and 3am existential anxiety. The final section is a love letter to a dying neighbourhood in Seoul. Set against the heartache of a rapidly developing nation, this is the story of one girl and her life with a beloved grandmother.

My favourite part is Graveyard Slot; there is something so grounding about having the first three sections be poetry in all their rhythmic, flowing, messy glory, and then to be given a piece of creative nonfiction reflecting on time at the family home in Seoul, in the daldongnae (moon village) Noryangjin. Now is probably a great time to note that I am using the romanised version of these Korean names for your reading sake. Noryangjin sounds more like no-ryang-jin, where the ‘r’ sound is blended together with the ‘l’ sound, interchangeable depending on the word. Seeing the Korean culture, especially life in an older neighbourhood in Seoul, come through alongside Haro’s more western style and image (tattoos, short hair, fashion sense, etc.) made for an interesting cultural contrast. Within Graveyard Slot, the emotional and familial scenes are so heartfelt. The love and care and grief is profoundly felt, and this is as much a heartfelt love letter to her halmoni (grandmother) as it is to the neighbourhood that has been their home for generations.

Watching Television in a Love Motel is wild and unrelenting in its exploration of youthful adventure and mishaps, mistakes and corrections, and love, sex, drugs, alcohol, and clubbing in the early years of adulthood. It is an experience and a half, and it is a sober reminder of the changing times, the ever-developing state we find ourselves in, and the pressure to escape into something we can control, and to find control within ourselves. While I found it difficult to relate to for the first half, it found a home with me in the second half.