Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 22

A Review of Rebecca Kim Wells's Storm the Earth

Posted by: jacobballew

This book was on my absolute high priority list for YA releases this year because I read the first in the series. Rebecca Kim Wells’s Storm the Earth (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2020) follows hot on the heels of Shatter the Sky. The official marketing description shall give us the appropriate context to get this review party started:

“Maren and her girlfriend Kaia set out to rescue Sev and free the dragons from the corrupt emperor in the explosive finale to the journey that began with the thrilling Shatter the Sky. Let them burn. Maren’s world was shattered when her girlfriend, Kaia, was abducted by the Aurati. After a daring rescue, they’ve finally been reunited, but Maren's life is still in pieces: Kaia seems more like a stranger than the lover Maren knew back home; Naava, the mother of all dragons, has retreated into seclusion to recover from her wounds, leaving Maren at a loss on how to set the rest of the dragons free; and worst of all, her friend Sev has been captured by the emperor’s Talons. As a prisoner of Zefed, Sev finds himself entangled in a treacherous game of court politics. With more people joining the rebellion, whispers of a rogue dragon mistress spreading, and escape seeming less likely with each passing day, Sev knows that it won’t be long before the emperor decides to make an example of him. If he’s to survive, he’ll have to strike first—or hope Maren reaches him in time. With the final battle for Zefed looming, Maren must set aside her fears, draw upon all she’s learned about her dragon-touched abilities, and face her destiny once and for all. But when the fighting is over and the smoke clears, who will be left standing?”

So, I’ll be providing some spoilers in this review just because I had a very strong emotional reaction to the book’s central romance plot. In any case, look away unless you want to be spoiled (or have already read the book). There are two main plots in this book.

**Spoiler**

( Read more... )

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A Review of Rishi Reddi’s Passage West (Ecco, 2020).

Posted by: jacobballew

I saved the reading of this novel—Rishi Reddi’s Passage West (Ecco, 2020)—when I needed it most, in this time of unrest and desperate need for racial justice. It seemed especially fitting to read it now given the concerns that the novel brings up. Let’s let the official HarperCollins/Ecco description do some work for us:

“A sweeping, vibrant first novel following a family of Indian sharecroppers at the onset of World War I, revealing a little-known part of California history 1914: Ram Singh arrives in the Imperial Valley on the Mexican border, reluctantly accepting his friend Karak’s offer of work and partnership in a small cantaloupe farm. Ram is unmoored; fleeing violence in Oregon, he desperately longs to return to his wife and newborn son in Punjab—but he is duty bound to make his fortune first. In the Valley, American settlement is still new and the rules are ever shifting. Alongside Karak; Jivan and his wife, Kishen; and Amarjeet, a U.S. soldier, Ram struggles to farm in the unforgiving desert. When he meets an alluring woman who has fought in Mexico’s revolution, he strives to stay true to his wife. The Valley is full of settlers hailing from other cities and different continents. The stakes are high and times are desperate—just one bad harvest or stolen crop could destabilize a family. And as anti- immigrant sentiment rises among white residents, the tensions of life in the west finally boil over. In her ambitious debut novel, Rishi Reddi, award-winning author of Karma and Other Stories, explores an enduring question: Who is welcome in America? Richly imagined and beautifully rendered, Passage West offers a moving portrait of one man’s search for home.”

As the description reminds us twice, this novel is Reddi’s first, but she does have a wonderful short story collection I’ve taught a couple of times (Karma & Other Stories, which used to be on regular rotation in my Transnational Asia/Pacific class). In any case, this novel is so intriguing precisely because it really brings up the fraught dynamics of interracial and interethnic alliances and coalitions. There are ostensibly three main protagonists: Karak, Ram, and Amarjeet. Karak and Ram are flip sides of the same coin, as both ultimately want to derive a financially profitable life through the land. Where they diverge, at least at first, are their commitments to an ethnic heritage. Karak eventually marries a woman of Mexican descent. Ram is dismissive of this relationship but over time, he realizes that he will be unable to reunite with his wife, Padma, who (along with her son Santosh) is denied entry into the United States because she is perceived to be polluted due to a disability that derived out of a childhood illness. Ram’s growing loneliness leads him to engage in an extramarital affair to someone related to Karak’s wife Rosa, a woman named Adela. Of course, there are many problems and intricacies related to the harvesting of crops that occur, and some of these issues lead the novel to move toward its final climax. Amarjeet, I found to be the most compelling character, as he is the ostensible “new generation” of South Asian Americans, someone who wants to be a patriot and thus enlists during World War I, along with his Japanese American best-friend, Harry. Amarjeet goes through quite an interesting character arc, but somehow his story felt most incomplete, as Reddi positions the novel ultimately around Ram, through brief frame narratives that move us closer to the contemporary moment. It is through Amarjeet that we get the strongest sense that racial justice must be pursued as a political project, and he is the character that obviously resonates right now, as our country continues to confront both its racist legacies and its racist present. Reddi’s Passage West, in conjunction with all that is going on today, reminds me of the activist possibilities that first propelled me down the past of race and ethnic studies. The novel energizes me to continue to see how literature and social contexts, the representational and the actual, still are necessarily and politically intertwined.

 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060898793/passage-west/

 

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A Review of Alexandra Villasante’s The Grief Keeper (G.P. Putnam’s Sons for YR, 2019).

Posted by: jacobballew

I’m reviewing Alexandra Villasante’s The Grief Keeper (G.P. Putnam’s Sons for YR, 2019), which I am considering for a fall graduate class on speculative fiction. While it is not penned by an Asian American writer, it is still very appropriate to this review site given the fact that two minor characters are of Asian descent. Let’s let the official marketing blurb give us some context:

“This stunning YA debut is a timely and heartfelt speculative narrative about healing, faith, and freedom. Seventeen-year-old Marisol has always dreamed of being American, learning what Americans and the US are like from television and Mrs. Rosen, an elderly expat who had employed Marisol's mother as a maid. When she pictured an American life for herself, she dreamed of a life like Aimee and Amber's, the title characters of her favorite American TV show. She never pictured fleeing her home in El Salvador under threat of death and stealing across the US border as ‘an illegal,’ but after her brother is murdered and her younger sister, Gabi's, life is also placed in equal jeopardy, she has no choice, especially because she knows everything is her fault. If she had never fallen for the charms of a beautiful girl named Liliana, Pablo might still be alive, her mother wouldn't be in hiding and she and Gabi wouldn't have been caught crossing the border. But they have been caught and their asylum request will most certainly be denied. With truly no options remaining, Marisol jumps at an unusual opportunity to stay in the United States. She's asked to become a grief keeper, taking the grief of another into her own body to save a life. It's a risky, experimental study, but if it means Marisol can keep her sister safe, she will risk anything. She just never imagined one of the risks would be falling in love, a love that may even be powerful enough to finally help her face her own crushing grief. The Grief Keeper is a tender tale that explores the heartbreak and consequences of when both love and human beings are branded illegal.”

This description tends to focus on the circumstances that lead to Marisol and Gabi trying to attain asylum in the United States. Believing that they have been denied, they fall under the care of Indranie Patel, who enrolls them in a super-secret program related to grief keeping. Marisol is chosen to be the bearer of someone else’s grief. In return, Indranie promises to help Marisol and her sister a chance to live in the United States. Marisol discovers that the grief she must eventually bear comes from a teenager named Rey, who has lost her brother in a tragic accident. At first Rey does not want to wear the cuff that would transfer the feelings of melancholy onto Marisol, but over time the two develop a friendship and Marisol is able to persuade Rey to wear the cuff. The cuff at first does not seem to work, but eventually Marisol experiences an overwhelming amount of grief. While the transfer does seem to lift Rey out of clinical depression, it obviously comes at a cost. To read Villasante’s novel, one must think of the microcosmic narrative in an allegorical way. The labor of grief keeping is more largely metaphorical for the different service industries that so many from the global south must engage in for their first world counterparts. In this sense, Villasante’s novel is a strong political critique of this kind of class system. But, the localized nature of the narrative and the ways in which Rey and Marisol find a kind of tidy resolution leaves the larger landscape of labor out of the equation. Villasante had a chance to make a more explicit political statement with this text but unfortunately veers away from it in the conclusion. Nevertheless, the premise of this novel is first rate and the implicit critiques of neoliberal economics and the precariousness of forced migrations make this young adult debut well worth reading.

 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562053/the-grief-keeper-by-alexandra-villasante/

 

 

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A Review of I.W. Gregorio’s This is My Brain in Love (Little Brown for Young Readers, 2020).

Posted by: jacobballew

In this review, I’m covering I.W. Gregorio’s This is My Brain in Love (Little Brown for Young Readers, 2020). This YA title is Gregorio’s second; I very much enjoyed the first, so I was jazzed to see that Gregorio had a new title come out. Let’s let the official site give us some key information:

“Jocelyn Wu has just three wishes for her junior year: To make it through without dying of boredom, to direct a short film with her BFF Priya Venkatram, and to get at least two months into the year without being compared to or confused with Peggy Chang, the only other Chinese girl in her grade. Will Domenici has two goals: to find a paying summer internship, and to prove he has what it takes to become an editor on his school paper. Then Jocelyn’s father tells her their family restaurant may be going under, and all wishes are off. Because her dad has the marketing skills of a dumpling, it’s up to Jocelyn and her unlikely new employee, Will, to bring A-Plus Chinese Garden into the 21st century (or, at least, to Facebook). What starts off as a rocky partnership soon grows into something more. But family prejudices and the uncertain future of A-Plus threaten to keep Will and Jocelyn apart. It will take everything they have and more, to save the family restaurant and their budding romance.”

I’m going to be honest: I had some trouble following the alternating first person narratives occasionally. The sections were often so short that I wasn’t inside a particular mind-space for too long, and the fragmentation interrupted my personal readerly flow. That being said, Gregorio definitely has created some winning character. Jocelyn is a stubborn but very spritely protagonist, a character who wants to make the most of her time in Central New York, so when the A-Plus Chinese Garden starts to struggle financially, she will pretty much do anything to get the restaurant back on its feet. When Will enters the equation, things get complicated because he’s not only a superb employee but also someone that Jocelyn actually really likes. This synergy proves to be a problem when things get romantic, and Jocelyn’s parents are not into it. This issue changes up the narrative ballgame, as Jocelyn and Will have to keep things absolutely professional until certain goals are met. Perhaps, Gregorio’s biggest intervention is related to mental health concerns. Will suffers from anxiety, while Jocelyn certainly is suffering from undiagnosed depression. While Will and his family are supportive of any sort of help he might engage in, including both therapy and potential pharmaceutical tools, Jocelyn is resistant that she needs any help for her depression. IN this sense, Gregorio’s novel brings up the thorny issue of mental health, especially as it concerns Asian American immigrant families. As the novel moves toward its conclusion, this particular issue makes This is My Brain in Love politically engaged and particularly resonant in this complicated moment we’re living in.

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.lbyr.com/titles/i-w-gregorio/this-is-my-brain-in-love/9780316423823/

 

 

 

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A Review of Mintie Das’s Brown Girl Ghosted (Houghton Mifflin for Young Readers, 2020)

Posted by: jacobballew

·      

Format: Hardcover

·       ISBN-13/EAN: 9780358128892

·       ISBN-10: 0358128897

·       Pages: 304

·       Price: $17.99

·       Publication Date: 03/24/2020

 

This book has gotten pretty low ratings on Goodreads, which exists in contrast to my experience. So much is about context. Right now, in this COVID lockdown, the frothiness of a supernatural YA seemed just about perfect, even though the protagonist is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Let’s let the official editorial description give us some info:

“Violet Choudhury may be part of the popular clique at school, but as one of a handful of brown girls in a small Illinois town, all she really wants to do is blend in and disappear. Unfortunately for her, she’s got a knack for seeing spirits, including the dead—something she’s tried to ignore all her life. But when the queen bee of Violet’s cheerleading squad ends up dead following a sex tape that’s not as consensual as everyone wants to believe, Violet's friends from the spirit world decide it’s the perfect time for Violet to test her skills and finally accept the legacy of spiritual fighters from whom she’s descended. Her mission? Find the killer. Or else she’s next.”

The folks over at Goodreads had a variety of critiques: they didn’t like the editing; they didn’t think the marketing was accurate, etc. In any case, I’m not going to young adult because I want high literature. Paranormal YA, for me, is about a plot driven, character exaggerated experience, wherein the stakes are abnormally high even though romance somehow manages to sneak in there, despite the fact that the world might end. What I *am* disappointed by is the lack of ethnic signifiers in the description. I’m not sure why the Houghton team would leave out the importance of Violet’s (South Asian) Assamese background, which is crucial to the fact that she is a warrior queen with supernatural powers! In any case, Violet’s a lot: she wants to be a popular teen but that means befriending mean, cheerleading queen bees. She’s quite sarcastic, so that can definitely lead to a polarized reading response. The novel definitely improves in the back half, and many of the readers from Goodreads probably didn’t manage to make it to the point where Violet must confront the fact that she is a powerful warrior queen and must take this power and use it ethically. This plot really goes in that direction once the high school’s queen bee ends up slut-shamed and then subsequently is found murdered. Violet, by virtue of a kind of initiation ritual for her warrior queen clan, is forced to find out what happened to the queen bee else she will remain in a state of ghostliness. Thus, Violet finally begins a stage of growth that makes her much more likable. She’s still a lot to take but begins to understand the important lesson that people are far more than what they seem or perform outwardly. The major political heft of the novel is the groupthink culture that can make a high school totally poisonous. What happens to the queen bee prior to her murder is absolutely horrifying, and when the details come out about why it occurs, you begin to see exactly how rotten the core of this social group actually is. Underlying the plot element though is a larger social critique about rivalry and leadership, popularity and privilege, something that I thought would actually be quite compelling to a number of young readers. The epilogue suggests we may be in for a sequel, which I’m all aboard for.

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/Brown-Girl-Ghosted/9780358128892

 

 

 

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A Review of June Hur’s The Silence of Bones (Feiwel & Friends, 2020).

Posted by: jacobballew

So, I after finished up June Hur’s The Silence of Bones (Feiwel & Friends, 2020), I immediately looked up whether or not it would have a follow-up and it indeed will! Hur’s Silence of Bones doesn’t strike me as a YA. Though our narrator is a teenager, much else about this gritty narrative, set in Choson era Korea is hardly the stuff I’ve seen in the genre. It’s just far darker, with a social realist texture that I typically find in adult-oriented work. I think it just got slotted into YA because of the protagonist’s age and maybe because the narrative has some definitive closure (even as there are other elements that are left a little bit open). In any case, let’s let the official site give us some crucial information:

“1800, Joseon (Korea). Homesick and orphaned sixteen-year-old Seol is living out the ancient curse: ‘May you live in interesting times. Indentured to the police bureau, she’s been tasked with assisting a well-respected young inspector with the investigation into the politically charged murder of a noblewoman. As they delve deeper into the dead woman's secrets, Seol forms an unlikely bond of friendship with the inspector. But her loyalty is tested when he becomes the prime suspect, and Seol may be the only one capable of discovering what truly happened on the night of the murder. But in a land where silence and obedience are valued above all else, curiosity can be deadly.”

This anemic description doesn’t do much to round out the character list or complicated historical contexts. Seol is in an interesting position during this historical period. She’s an assistant to a detective, but she’s also an indentured servant. She is tolerated because she is needed to query female witnesses in crimes but at the same time is disrespected because she is seen to be encroaching in a patriarchal occupation. When I was researching the Joseon/Choson period, I was astonished to find out about Korea’s caste-system and feudal society, which quickly disintegrated in the 20th century due to colonialism, occupation, war, and modernization. She’s working for a bureau in which there are competing factions and rivals. Seol works most closely with a gruff and austere man, Inspector Han. They develop a tenuous alliance, which is tested over the course of the plot. Hur’s narrative has added complexity due to the fact that Seol has a checkered family background; she’s partly estranged from her family and seeking out her brother. The plot is kicked off early on in the novel when a noblewoman, Lady O, is found murdered with her nose sliced off. The body count slowly piles up, and so we have a case on our hands. Seol’s investigatory acumen proves to be fortuitous, yet also places her in danger, because she draws ever closer to the killer. In the middle of writing this review, I had a chance to listen to a podcast and discovered that Hur actually did write this novel for adults, which makes a lot of sense. Yay me! In any case, it took me a little bit of time to get into the style of Hur’s writing but once I did, I was completely hooked. It may be the first novel I’ve read by a Korean North American writer that’s delved so deeply in this historical period. The tendency has been to write from the 20th or 21st century context, so this narrative and its unique historical contexts was truly refreshing to read. A highly recommended YA debut. The follow-up, tentatively titled The Forest of Stolen Girls, is set to be published in 2021.

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250229557

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A Review of Brandon Shimoda’s The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019)

Posted by: jacobballew

Originally, I started reading Brandon Shimoda’s The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019) probably this past summer, but I stalled out of it for some reason. I don’t know why, because I started it up this past month and flew through it. To back up a bit: let’s give you some context not only about the book but also about City Lights publisher and bookstore. City Lights recently had some financial turbulence due to COVID. Go here for more information about it:

 

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-independent-bookstores-crowdsource-youfundme-20200415-ryuvg4nqcbbolctvnwv6f5sdau-story.html

 

The GoFundMe campaign was ultimately successful, but with lockdown measures extending well into August, we should continue to support our independent bookstores and publishers. What little I can do is to review more of their titles. The other thing that came up was that I’m part of a cool little “academic support” social group with a wonderful poet/ scholar/friend, who had reminded me of Brandon Shimoda’s work. While she works on an article, I promised her that I would read and review the title, as I had originally intended to do anyway.

So, let’s get back to Brandon Shimoda’s Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019), which is Shimoda’s first foray into creative nonfiction, after a number of critically acclaimed poetry collection. The official site gives us a very pithy description here: “The Grave on the Wall is a memoir and a book of mourning, a grandson's attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather's lifelong struggle. Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life—child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien and spy, desert wanderer, American citizen—mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the twentieth century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather, and unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory and forgetting.”

Let’s be clear: though billed as a kind of memoir, it’s really something else. My aforementioned poet/scholar/friend though it might be billed as a new genre, something hybrid, and I’d agree: there’s certainly travelogue, biography (via narrativizing Shimoda’s life), archival research (looking into special collections), historical information (Japanese American and Japanese transnational history concerning things like the atomic bomb and picture brides), autographical perspectives (via Shimoda), amongst other types of writings and texts. While the core of Shimoda’s work is undoubtedly the desire to engage in a “part recovery” of Midori’s life, there is so much more about the work. Perhaps the most wondrous thing about the work is that the reader is brought into the process of discovery and of frustration that befalls the individual who dares to research so deeply into one’s family history. One of the most interesting moments is when Shimoda is convinced he has found Midori’s first wife; they have a phone conversation but this individual never admits if she is in fact who Shimoda thinks she is. There’s another moment when a photograph is incorrectly identified in an archive, and Shimoda must correct the inaccuracy. Then there’s the intriguing experience of visiting Missoula, Montana, where many Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. My description and overview cannot do the work justice; there is so much texture and so much intricacy to this work. When you read toward the ending of Grave on the Wall the many writers that inspired Shimoda, you’re not surprised to see so many Asian American women writers, including but not limited to Don Mee Choi, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Karen Tei Yamashita, Maxine Hong Kingston. Shimoda’s work certainly resonates alongside the experimental, multi-genre works of these writers. A truly immersive experience.  

 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100369430

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A Review of K.S. Villoso’s The Wolf of Oren-Yaro (Orbit, 2020).

Posted by: jacobballew

Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy / Fiction / Fantasy / Action & Adventure

On Sale: July 23rd 2019

Price: $9.99 / $12.99 (CAD)

Page Count: 496

ISBN-13: 9780316532631

 

So, K.S. Villoso’s The Wolf of Oren-Yaro (Orbit, 2020) was one of those texts I only learned about via an enterprising publicist. I’m really glad they reached out because this novel was one of those things that was perfect to read during this time of viral outbreak. At night I’ve been having some trouble sleeping (and I’ve been trying to turn off the news to get a reprieve), so I’ve naturally turned to some genres that take you to other places and times. Let’s let the official marking/ editorial description take it away:

“From ‘a powerful new voice in fantasy’ (Kameron Hurley) comes the tale of a queen who must unite her divided land, even if she’s hated by the very people she’s trying to protect. Born under the crumbling towers of her kingdom, Queen Talyien was the shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves. It nearly tore her nation apart. But her arranged marriage to the son of a rival clan heralds peace. However, he suddenly disappears before their reign can begin, and the kingdom is fractured beyond repair. Years later, he sends a mysterious invitation to meet. Talyien journeys across the sea in hopes of reconciling their past. An assassination attempt quickly dashes those dreams. Stranded in a land she doesn’t know, with no idea whom she can trust, Talyien will have to embrace her namesake. A Wolf of Oren-yaro is not tamed.”

The Queen, as I will henceforth call her, as she would expect it of me, is obviously the centerpiece for this novel but there is another really crucial character: Khine, a kind of failed physician turned con man turned probably romantic lead, but I am getting a little bit ahead of myself. The Queen must attempt to reunite her kingdom by heading off to a foreign land, where her husband (Rayyel) has essentially been in abdication for five years. Though she’s pretty angry at him, she still loves him and after all, they have a son (named Thanh) who could use a father, or so she thinks at first. When they finally meet to discuss matters, it becomes apparent that Rayyel doesn’t want to get back together. In fact, he prefers splitting up the lands that they would be governing together, so that each would rule over a set of warlords. When negotiations begin to stall, they decide to adjourn for the night. But the next day, assassinations are set upon them and The Queen barely escapes with her life. The next part of the novel is the best: the Queen must somehow maintain a kind of disguise as a commoner, but she gets entangled with a man named Lo Bahn, who believes he can simply buy her as a piece of human chattel. Though she finally seems to escape his attentions, there are many traps set in place. A possible ally, for instance, named Prince Yuebek, ends up being only invested in getting the kingdom for himself. As the novel moves toward its final arc, the Queen must figure out who tried to kill her and who her allies really are. I won’t spoil things any further, but suffice it to say, there are more installments in this series (at least one at this point), so the adventure will continue on! I will admit, there were points in the novel that I found my attention flagging. The longer sequences of flashback I tended to find less compelling, and it did take a little bit of time for the plotting to catch up, but once it did (around the time that the Queen meets Khine and the assassins attempt to kill her the first time) the momentum never let up! What I especially appreciated about this work is the strong, female heroine, who though understanding she must rule with an iron fist, still possesses the compassion and empathy to make both occasional mistakes (and therefore drive the plot forward) in who she trusts as well as crucial alliances that do help her endure. A truly compelling character.

 

For more on the book (including purchase links), go here:

 

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/k-s-villoso/the-wolf-of-oren-yaro/9780316532631/

 

 

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A Review of Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony (Wave Books, 2020).

Posted by: jacobballew

It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed poetry, which is a total problem. I’ve been promising some folks that I’d start reviewing poetry again. The problem for me is that when I review poetry, I get too involved in the review itself, and they start to become these little articles. To save myself some grief, I will likely err on the side of gloss, meaning that I won’t likely quote too often from source material. In any case, given the problems with permissions in poetry, it’s probably the better way to go! But I digress. Don Mee Choi has returned with her third brilliant collection, the ferocious, confrontational DMZ Colony, which squarely situates South Korea from the framework of neocolonial discourses. This argument has been advanced by some scholars more generally but to see it play out in poetic form is truly a treat. Choi really pushes herself formally and contextually, as this collection uses a hybrid technique at times: combining oral history with lyric reimagination to produce something close to semi-fictionalized dramatic monologues. The official webpage for the book gives us this description:

“Woven from poems, prose, photographs, and drawings, Don Mee Choi's DMZ Colony is a tour de force of personal and political reckoning set over eight acts. Evincing the power of translation as a poetic device to navigate historical and linguistic borders, it explores Edward Said's notion of ‘the intertwined and overlapping histories’ in regard to South Korea and the United States through innovative deployments of voice, story, and poetics. Like its sister book, Hardly War, it holds history accountable, its very presence a resistance to empire and a hope in humankind.”

This overview does a great job of reminding me of the interdisciplinary, multiformal nature of Choi’s collection. The other issue that it brings up is the problems and productivities of translation. When Choi’s lyric speaker travels to Korea to interview various individuals, who have been critical of the South Korean state apparatus, she “poetically” translates what she hears. The speaker’s translations are never equivalent and often whimsical in their manifestations, but what is crucial to remember is that Choi’s multidimensional work is uninterested in casting blame in any one direction. If anything, Choi’s DMZ Colony reveals the ambivalent ways in which South Korea went about its emergence as an independent nation, first under Syngman Rhee and then under Park Chung Hee. One of the most interesting intertexts that Choi weaves throughout DMZ Colony is Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony.” Here, you can’t help but reconsider certain events from the framework of torture and imprisonment that is at the heart of Kafka’s blistering social critique. For Choi and her lyric speaker, we know that diving back into that dark well of history is never totally hopeless. In the reformulations and translations of so much trauma, DMZ Colony still finds sites of possibility and potentiality in the productive mutations of art, visual culture, and language. In this malleable space and time, there are still “wings.”

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/dmz-colony

 

 

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Litany for the Long Moment by Mary-Kim Arnold, A Review

Posted by: jacobballew

Upon reading Mary-Kim Arnold’s effulgent Litany for the Long Moment, a work that I can best describe as multi-genre, multi-form, you’ll immediately understand the unique moment in which we find ourselves, especially as readers of Asian American literature broadly defined. Littered throughout Arnold’s text is a genealogy of Asian American writers, some specifically referenced (like Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Myung Mi Kim) while others are certainly obliquely called out with respect to similar formal and contextual issues being explored in Litany (notably the many brilliant KAD memoirs such as Jane Jeong Trenka’s Fugitive Visions and Jenny Heijun Wills’ Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related).  Let’s let the official description give us some key contexts:

“The orphan at the center of Litany for the Long Moment is without homeland and without language. In an extended lyric essay, Mary-Kim Arnold attempts to claim her own linguistic, cultural, and aesthetic lineage. Arnold explores the interconnectedness of language and identity through the lens of migration and cultural rupture. Invoking artists, writers, and thinkers such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Francesca Woodman, and Susan Sontag, Litany for the Long Moment interweaves personal documents, images, and critical texts as a means to examine longing, loss, and identity.”

This rather pithy description gives us a decent condensation of the text, though one thing that I would really want to really want to emphasize is the question of genre and form, which is defined here as a “lyric essay.” I’ve been wondering about some of the problems that come up with things need to be categorized and named. In this case, I’ve been reading quite a number of things called “essays” and have been thinking about what constitutes an essay versus something like a memoir. In any case, the term essay seems to give more latitude about the content that is included. In Litany for the Long Moment, Arnold often ventures beyond the autobiographical, especially in considering elements of Francesca Woodman’s photography and the general historical development of Korea as a country (along with its language). I read Litany at two distinct moments in my life, one in a period prior to COVID and when my mother was still alive, and then after COVID and after my mother had succumbed to an infection related to her metastatic cancer diagnosis. It’s interesting to think about my different reactions to the texts. Initially, I remember responding so much to the question of home and homecoming. At one point, Arnold travels to Korea, in part to search for more answers to her background and to get a sense of what it might mean for her to embrace a Korean ethnic identity. There are no easy answers. What Arnold faces are feelings of rupture and of alienation. Nevertheless, so much about what makes Arnold’s work so affecting is the kind of depth she gives to questions of searching and of identity. She reminds us of the fact that Korea is a peninsula rooted in rupture, the very land split into two. Following my mother’s passing, I am rooted so much in the text among the complicated attachments of parenthood. For Arnold, the question of two mothers can only really be considered following the death of her adoptive mother, who she senses would have felt betrayed had she been alive to see Arnold consider looking for her biological family, for going back to Korea. Arnold of course understands the gravity and complexity of alternative kinships, while also feeling the pull of her biological origins. I am struck on this latest reading also about the intriguing and ambivalent nature of language that Arnold explores: “If language creates, can language also destroy?” (84). Though posed as a question, Arnold clearly ventures an answer in the creative realm with this publication. We bask in the sense of poetic potentiality that Arnold sees in language, even if Litany still reminds us that there is so much the loss one must necessarily confront. An extraordinary work, one that must be taught alongside so many other brilliant essay collections having come out; it is inspiring me to think about a course on the Asian American essay!

 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

http://www.essaypress.org/mary-kim-arnold/

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