A Cruelty Special to Our Species: Poems
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About this ebook
In her arresting debut collection, urgently relevant for our times, poet Emily Jungmin Yoon confronts the histories of sexual violence against women, focusing in particular on Korean so-called “comfort women,” women who were forced into sexual labor in Japanese-occupied territories during World War II.
In wrenching language, A Cruelty Special to Our Species unforgettably describes the brutalities of war and the fear and sorrow of those whose lives and bodies were swept up by a colonizing power, bringing powerful voice to an oppressed group of people whose histories have often been erased and overlooked. “What is a body in a stolen country,” Yoon asks. “What is right in war.”
Moving readers through time, space, and different cultures, and bringing vivid life to the testimonies and confessions of the victims, Yoon takes possession of a painful and shameful history even while unearthing moments of rare beauty in acts of resistance and resilience, and in the instinct to survive and bear witness.
“Reaching back to a historical trauma well before her own time, Emily Jungmin Yoon finds language to convey its horror and violence—painfully and unsparingly but somehow also with a delicacy, precision, and attention that does not impose the true (literal) brutality on the reader . . . This is an engaging, urgent book by a writer we must listen to.” —Amy Tan, #1 New York Times–bestselling author
“A heart-wrenching debut.” —The Washington Post
“Lovely, moving, and ultimately devastating.” —Chang-rae Lee, New York Times–bestselling author
Emily Jungmin Yoon
Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of Ordinary Misfortunes, the 2017 winner of the Sunken Garden Chapbook Prize by Tupelo Press. Yoon was born in Busan, Republic of Korea and received her BA at the University of Pennsylvania and MFA in Creative Writing at New York University. She has been the recipient of awards and fellowships from Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, AWP’s WC&C Scholarship Competition, and the Poetry Foundation, among others. Her poems and translations have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, POETRY, The New York Times Magazine, and Korean Literature Now. She currently serves as the Poetry Editor for The Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is a PhD student studying Korean literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
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Reviews for A Cruelty Special to Our Species
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- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Cruelty Special To Our Species:Poems by Emily Jungmin Yoon 2018 Harper Collins 4.5 / 5.0 This packs so much emotion, fear, and heartbreak, it is hard to grasp. The poems here share the brutality and sexual violence against women. Specifically, Korean ¨comfort women¨, women captured and forced to have sex with soldiers in Japanese occupied territories during WWII. Many of the soldiers were American. Let that sink in.....The forced violence, and deaths pissed me off. It was difficult to read and devastating to think about or invision.....it moves you and terrifies you at the same time.This is Jungmin Yoons debut. Her vitality, energy, and strength are amazing. I will look forward to more from her.This is what poetry is all about.