Grass is a landmark graphic novel that makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.'Īs heartbreaking and heavy a topic as this is, Gendry-Kim has delivered Granny Ok-sun's story with the sensitivity and tenderness that this valiant, elderly lady deserves. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee's strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. 'Grass is a powerful anti-war graphic novel, offering up firsthand the life story of a Korean girl named Lee Ok-sun who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, a disputed chapter in 20th century Asian history.

But never in her worst nightmares did she imagine the horrors that her life would hold.įor an idea of the contents of this important yet harrowing biography, here's what the publisher has to say Lee Ok-sun learned from an early age that this wasn't a woman's world. Instead, with younger sibling tied to her back, she helps her mother at the market in hopes of scraping together enough to be able to feed the family that evening. Lee Ok-sun is a young girl with one simple dream: to go to school like her mischievous brothers. The year is 1934 and we're in Busan, South Korea. 'Don't give me that hogwash! You think you two are the same?'

Grass is a landmark graphic novel that makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.'You're whining about school when we've got nothing to eat?' The cartoonist Gendry-Kim’s interviews with Lee become an integral part of Grass, forming the heart and architecture of this powerful nonfiction graphic novel and offering a holistic view of how Lee’s wartime suffering changed her. Grass is painted in a black ink that flows with lavish details of the beautiful fields and farmland of Korea and uses heavy brushwork on the somber interiors of Lee’s memories. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee’s strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. Beginning in Lee’s childhood, Grass shows the lead-up to the war from a child’s vulnerable perspective, detailing how one person experienced the Japanese occupation and the widespread suffering it entailed for ordinary Koreans. This true story of a Korean comfort woman documents how the atrocity of war devastates women’s lives Grass is a powerful antiwar graphic novel, telling the life story of a Korean girl named Okseon Lee who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War-a disputed chapter in twentieth-century Asian history.

Grass kim keum suk