06 Dec / Banned Book Club by Hyun Sook Kim with Ryan Estrada, illustrated by Hyung-Ju Ko [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Busan-based wife-and-husband team Hyun Sook Kim and Ryan Estrada mine Kim’s young adult experiences to expose a chilling period of recent Korean history so antithetical to the globally addictive entertainment of K-dramas and K-pop currently synonymous with South Korea.
In 1983, Hyun Sook is a college freshman, determined to get the education her mother resents but her father, thankfully, supports. Her campus arrival is met with a student riot in progress calling for the dismissal of President Chun Doo-hwan over his totalitarian dictatorship. Hyun Sook manages to slip past police blockades and arrive at class, further determined to keep her head down, study, and “stay out of politics!” As an English literature major, she’s thrilled to be invited to a book club, but what she enters is anything but a cozy circle of tea-sipping groupies. Hyun Sook attempts to flee but not without hearing first that she has “some waking up to do.” Despite lingering reluctance, Hyun Sook’s quest for truth and understanding is on even as she fights her justified fears.
In recreating such difficult history, artist Hyung-Ju Ko finds a remarkable balance of humor and bleakness, of youthful tenacity and growing cynicism. From joyous mask dances to bored classrooms to tortuous jail cells, Ko captures Kim’s activist-as-a-young-student journey with an affecting resonance sure to inspire today’s youthful generation of tenacious changemakers.
Review: “Graphic Novels,” Booklist, November 15, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2020 (United States)