![]() ![]() ![]() The ordinary stories in this collection come from the mouths of women-from the primary speaker and from other personas intended to “amplify and speak these women’s stories, not speak for” former “comfort women.” The persona poems are drawn from documentary materials in a variety of nonfiction texts. They’re rendered in descriptions of the swallowing earth, of graveyards, of countryside, and oceans. Her book is full of knives and other sharp edges, each honed by global historical narratives of war from the 1930s to the present day. In this world, a woman comforts herself, a young woman comforts her mother, girls are raped for the comfort of men. ![]() Yoon foregrounds these stories in her mostly narrative poems. “Our” reminds me there are ordinary stories that, in comparison to our worst tales of deprivation, are redemptive. And there’s no other species for which “this grape-bell has to do with speech. No other species has been known to prostitute their own for comfort. ![]() The worst of it, yes, but there’s a comforting sobriety in the inclusion of “ our” in her book’s title. Emily Jungmin Yoon’s debut collection of poetry begins with humanity. ![]()
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