No Hand Held Mine - (Ditta: Korean Humanities in Translation) by Kim Soom & Soom Kim

About the Book

In these two stories, "Granny Wild Goose" and "The Root's Tale," award-winning South Korean writer Kim Soom presents portraits of complex women who have emerged wiser from life's brutality. One is a former comfort woman, one is a modern woman in a failing relationship, yet neither flinches away from their lives. The sensitive translation maintains Kim's beautiful imagery and musical prose.

Book Synopsis

An elderly Korean woman talking about being forced into sexual slavery during World War II. A modern Korean woman extricating herself from a failing relationship with an artist. Award-winning South Korean writer Kim Soom presents us with portraits of two women who couldn't be more different but who both show resilience and compassion. No Hand Held Mine: Stories, containing one non-fiction piece and one short story, demonstrates the power and breadth of Kim's writing. "Granny Wild Goose" uses former Comfort Woman Gil Won-Ok's own words, recorded during conversations with Kim, to tell her life story of brutality, betrayal, and survival. In "The Root's Tale," the female protagonist comes to understand the strength of solitary women. Both devastating and reaffirming, No Hand Held Mine shows why Kim Soom has received every major literary award in Korea. Joon-Li Kim and Doo-Sun Ryu's sensitive translation maintains Kim's lyricism and exquisite imagery.

This book is published with the support of The Daesan Foundation.

Review Quotes

"No Hand Held Mine holds translators Joon-Li Kim and Doo-Sun Ryu's tender care to invite the Anglophone audience into Kim Soom's breath ("soom")--her uniquely dreamy, meditative prose and poetic rhythm."--Emily Jungmin Yoon "author of Find Me as the Creature I Am: Poems"

"Kim Soom carefully crafts each word and each negative space to articulate women's silenced histories. The unspeakable sings in this devastatingly beautiful book."--Grace M. Cho "author of Tastes Like War, finalist for the National Book Award"

About the Author

KIM SOOM is a novelist based in Seoul, South Korea. She has published numerous short stories and novels. Her works which have been translated and published in English include One Left, Divorce, and The Night Nobody Returns Home.

JOON-LI KIM was born in South Korea and grew up in the American Midwest. She is a freelance writer and an editor of academic research papers, novels, and memoirs.

DOO-SUN RYU is emeritus professor of English Literature at Seoul National University. He is the author of D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow and Women in Love: A Critical Study.

ALEXIS DUDDEN is professor of history at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Japan's Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power and Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea, and the United States.