Skirt Full of Black

by Sun Yung Shin

“Shin’s poetry is a grand orchestration of the cacophonic events and voices in an immigrant woman’s life. Marked by a keen political consciousness, an imagination as wicked as it is generous, and an erotic, physical sense of language both remembered and forgotten, these poems are at once social critique and personal intimation, worth revisiting again and again.”—Jane Jeong Trenka As Sun Yung Shin spins new myths from Catholic and Buddhist traditions and bestows new connotations upon the characters of the Korean alphabet, she gives voice to the spiritual and cultural hunger of transnational adoptees, crafting a nuanced, unique language for navigating the politics of gender, ethnicity, and identity. Visit her website at www.sunyungshin.com.

Genres: Poetry, Asian American, Adult, Literature

110 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, spent her early years in the Chicago area, and is now based in Minneapolis. She is the award-winning author of thirteen books for adults and children. She is 2026 McKnight Foundation Fellow in Creative Prose and a recent finalist for a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her newest picture book Revolutions are Made of Love: The Story of Grace Lee Boggs & James Boggs is available for pre-order wherever books are sold, and will be available on November 4, 2025; her nonfiction book Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration is forthcoming in 2026. Her poetry has been included in the 2021 Gwangju Biennale and she was an invited presenter at the Korean Literary Translation Institute's 2018 conference on Korean diasporic literature. She is a frequent speaker and keynote presenter in community spaces and at academic conferences, most recently at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and University of Joensuu, Finland. She is on the advisory board for the Immigrant Writing Series at Black Lawrence Press. For more about her work, please visit sunyungshin.com or follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.

Reviews

[Bryan Worra]

Easily an early contender for the 2007 Asian American Literary Award.

[Stephen]

Oy, why did I leave this book on my shelf for three weeks?

Bad me!

[CTEP]

Skirt Full of Black is a collection of poems written by Sun Yung Shin, whose name some may recognize as she is the editor of A Good Time for the Truth. Much like the essays included in that anthology, Shin's own writings address what it means to be a person of color in an overwhelmingly White community. Specifically, her poems are influenced by her experiences as a Korean adoptee raised by a White family, as a member of the Korean diaspora, and as someone who lives both within and outside of two different cultures.

This concept of straddling the line between two cultures is perhaps best illustrated in a series of poems entitled "Vestibulary", where Shin describes the images and emotions that come to her mind when she sees the shape of each of the characters from the Korean hangul writing system. Although Shin is clearly familiar with the history of the hangul writing system and the role it has played in ensuring that Korea has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, the fact that she is able to see images when looking at the characters hints that she learned how to read and write in Korean as an adult, rendering the hangul writing system a foreign one to someone who was removed from its homeland and raised surrounded by the Latin alphabet. Furthermore, the descriptions that Shin attaches to each character are quite possibly the result of her growing up around White American ideas of imagery and associations -- would someone who grew up with the hangul writing system see the same images that Shin sees?

Although many of the sentiments expressed in Shin's poetry may be unique to her experiences as an adoptee and a Korean-American, the overarching themes of her poems capture how it feels to have one foot each in two cultures, yet never entirely be a part of either. In the "Vestibulary" series of poems, for example, Shin clearly expresses a desire to better understand her Korean background and those who share it. She recognizes that learning the hangul writing system and knowing its complex history is a critical part of participating in Korean culture, yet she has a tendency to see these items through an American aesthetical lens. This sort of split experience and understanding is present within many who were either born in the United States or arrived at a young age, yet do not outwardly fit the bill for what it means to be wholly American.

[Kent]

Though at first a bit intimidating with its scattered, and sometimes barely cohesive, fragments, the book quickly takes footing in a swirl of identities--national, gender, and historical. It investigates through language, though even language gets questioned as a method. I know, doesn't all poetry investigate through language? Yes. However, in this case, we learn that Korean was originally a woman's language. Shin gives us poetic responses to individual letters in the Korean alphabet. Ultimately, English gets questioned as a language, even while it is entrusted to communicate the poetry in this book.

[Mark]

ok I admit Jim Morrison is my favorite poet and I haven't read anything since like it until I read this book. being a poet too myself i know it is possible to write poetry that you read the next day and don't understand exactly the meaning but the words are right. make sense? I didn't understand everything Sun Yung Shin wrote [and maybe she doesn't either], but there were some poems that I thought the Lizard King was back amongst us writing his shamanistic magic words for us to see. That is about the highest compliment I can think of right now. I hope the authoress appreciates what I'm trying to convey.

[Rob]

I don't often recommend books of poetry but Ms. Shin has a wonderful of sharing the passion of struggles with language. Passion in terms of frustration, enthusiastic joy, and fear of the power of words. Her poems separate the various meanings of English words and terms, break them down and show the hidden meanings.

While many other poets attempt this, they lose the beauty of words along the way, the ability for words to combine and ring a note. Skirt Full of Black is an exception book because it's author never rings a sour note even while de-constructing a language.

[Salim]

Awesome and energetic poetry, about topics dear to me (language! alphabets!) and near (politics! history!). The poetry is complex and beautifully-formed, and each time I read a piece I feel the depth of its expression and the joy of the writing.

[Molly]

See review here: Cut Bank

[Sharon]

Oh, how I miss SY's poetry! I can't wait for my copy from B&N.