Grass (GN)

Release date: 2019-08-27
Suggested retail price: $29.95

ISBN-10: 1770463623 1770463623
ISBN-13: 9781770463622 9781770463622

Description:
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.

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. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee’s strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. 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.

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 a landmark graphic novel that makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.

(added on 2019-08-06, modified on 2019-08-06)

• Reviewed by Rebecca Silverman (August 12, 2019)

• Encyclopedia information about Grass (manhwa)