Emily Jungmin Yoon, ”A CRUELTY SPECIAL TO OUR SPECIES” w/ Muriel Leung & Morgan Parker

In Emily Jungmin Yoon's arresting and urgently relevant debut collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species, she confronts the histories of sexual violence against women, focusing in particular on so-called “comfort women,” the majority of whom were Korean and who were forced into sexual labor to serve the Japanese Imperial Army in the Pacific theater of 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?”

In an author's note, Yoon explains that her poetry “does not exist to answer, but rather to continue asking, questions about my immigrant, ESL, Korean, and womanly experiences, or the violent history of twentieth-century Korea.” In taking on poetry about the comfort women,” she writes that "I'd like my poetry to serve to amplify and speak these women's stories, not speak for them.”

Yoon is joined in conversation by Muriel Leung and Morgan Parker.