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A review by warloujoyce
Human Acts by Han Kang
4.5
I think something in me cracked when I read this book.
I didn’t know anything about Gwangju before encountering Han Kang’s works. Well, as a BTS fan, I knew that it’s J-hope’s hometown. Then I read about the city’s history.
May 1980: The Gwangju Uprising was a protest against the installment of a military dictator who implemented martial law. A military crackdown led to a massacre of student protesters. Han Kang, the author, used to live in Gwangju and discovered the tragic events as a young girl.
TW: mass death, violence, torture, suicide, sexual abuse
Human Acts starts with a scene showing bodies waiting to be identified by their families. In this story, we follow a boy named Dong-ho, the events leading up to his death, and how it impacts other characters’ lives. Each chapter is dedicated to a different POV—a different lens to view the atrocities that occurred and their lingering nightmare. The last chapter is from the author’s POV.
I didn’t know anything about Gwangju before encountering Han Kang’s works. Well, as a BTS fan, I knew that it’s J-hope’s hometown. Then I read about the city’s history.
May 1980: The Gwangju Uprising was a protest against the installment of a military dictator who implemented martial law. A military crackdown led to a massacre of student protesters. Han Kang, the author, used to live in Gwangju and discovered the tragic events as a young girl.
TW: mass death, violence, torture, suicide, sexual abuse
Human Acts starts with a scene showing bodies waiting to be identified by their families. In this story, we follow a boy named Dong-ho, the events leading up to his death, and how it impacts other characters’ lives. Each chapter is dedicated to a different POV—a different lens to view the atrocities that occurred and their lingering nightmare. The last chapter is from the author’s POV.
…that room—had the boy used to spread out his homework on its cold paper floor, then lie stomach-down just as I had? The middle-school kid I’d heard the grown-ups whispering about. How had the seasons kept on turning for me, when time had stopped forever for him that May?
I expected this story to be harrowing, that’s why I postponed reading it. I can see why the content would be desensitizing but as a slow and emotional reader, I absorbed every page and it made me so sad.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t the graphic scenes that wrenched me, though these were unsettling and infuriating.
It was the quiet moments that made me cry: student volunteers tending to the mutilated bodies; kids barely out of school organizing funeral ceremonies; a friend complaining about the functional fountain (because how can the world go back to normal after a horror happened in this site?); a boy looking out for the safety of other kids; a survivor saying he’s worn out; a mother remembering that she buried her youngest with her own two hands; and a writer honoring her people the way she knows how.
I didn’t particularly connect with the characters, but I easily imagined the people that they represented—a friend, a sibling, a peer, or a parent.
Human Acts asks the question, is cruelty our base impulse? It’s saddening to be reminded that it is. This book holds a mirror to our face and makes us look at the evil that we’re capable of, and the pain we can and do inflict on each other. :((
Ok stopping here because this is getting bleaker. Human Acts is powerful but heavy stuff, so I’d recommend it but only in times of enough emotional bandwidth.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, and Violence