Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Трава

Wow. What a powerful story with such strong artwork. The illustrations feel oppressive, obviously since Lee Ok-Sun was oppressed through most of her life.

The author / illustrator, Keum Duk Gendry-Kim, met and interviewed Lee. They became friends of a sort, with Gendry-Kim working for three years to complete her biography. It begins when Lee was a child, sold by her parents to alleviate their poverty. From there things got progressively worse with her being abducted and sent to a “comfort station” at the age of 16 or 17.

Things were almost as bad after the war. The newly liberated women were shunned as whores, unable to find food or work. Lee told Gendry-Kim that her life was miserable from the moment she was born, and that’s all too clear.

Gendry-Kim tells Lee’s story in a straightforward fashion without sensationalizing the violence and misery. I confess I can’t conceive of this level of pain and anguish.

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

grass is a powerful, harrowing bio graphic novel abt korean comfort women in an unjustly less known chapter in ww 2 history. i expected this to be a difficult read but was nevertheless unprepared for how hard it hit me.

the graphic novel follows the life of one particular comfort woman, lee oksun, and from the get-go i was frustrated and angry reading abt the gender inequality experienced by lee since childhood. it's a tale older than time, yet it never ceases to be infuriating. there's a lot of triggering content here - unsurprising for a book mostly abt sexual slavery during wartime - but i was also particularly affected to tears by the story of seo mija, which was hard-hitting.

gendry-kim does justice to lee through her art and storytelling. despite the abundant violence and triggering content present, nothing feels gratuitous, w/ gendry-kim handling them all w/ care and detached objectivity. the brushstrokes and inkwork also masterfully convey both the external physical landscape of china and korea, and the internal situation of her subject.

this graphic novel tells an important story that deserves to be more known - esp as the injustice surrounding comfort women and japan's denialism still persisting - and gendry-kim does a lauded job of doing justice to the story.

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