emergencily's reviews
97 reviews

• a set of interconnected stories revolving around different characters as they live through the bloody gwangju student uprisings & subsequent massacres in 1980, and the aftermath of its grief and trauma throughtout the decades. 
• extremely visceral & raw, with a focus on bodies -- examining the marks of both physical and intangible violence left on the body, what we do with the bodies of the dead (washing & dressing, family burials, dumping in mass graves), and how we remember those bodies. there's a chapter told from the perspective of a corpse as the soul watches its own body being dumped into a mass grave and beginning to decompose
• all about emotion, memory, grief and loss. the book really makes you feel the loss of these young protestors and the emptiness they leave behind in the lives of their loved ones and in the collective nation

“After you died I could not hold a funeral,
And so my life became a funeral.
Oh, return to me.
Oh, return to me when I call your name.
Do not delay any longer. Return to me now.
After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.”

• how does this start as a silly, comedic medieval fantasy slice of life about cooking and it progresses into fantasy horror & a deconstruction of the human psyche, the root of earthly desires, the meaning of consumption, etc
• the act of consumption / cannibalization as both loving and transformative vs dominating and effacing
• cooking and sharing meals together as a declaration of intimacy and connection
• to be human is to desire and reach for things beyond us; at the root of human desire is a will to live
• our place in the natural world and our role in a web of connections to all living beings: human, monster, animal, plant
• incredible art as well; great and varied character design with tons of diversity and really thoughtful character design choices

• An insane trip of a book. Starts out following the MC as a young girl with a troubled family life, who fantasizes about having magic powers as a means of escapism; devolves into gory self mutilating cannibalistic chaos in the last 30 pages
• The prose is simple and matter of fact in a childlike manner while describing abject horrors — which  makes it all the more unsettling to read 
• Chilling and heartbreaking to read about the intense violence and victimization the MC faces throughout her life as a child and as a woman, and her life long struggle to process her trauma and ensuing sense of alienation - not only from her family and from society, but from her own body and mind. She grapples with depersonalization & disassociation as her sense of autonomy and identity is under siege by outside forces — social mores, cultural expectations of conformity, patriarchal reproductive control, and coercive violence from her family
• I think the book speaks to the messy, nasty and violent parts of victimhood & trauma… the feeling of what it means to be violated and colonized by the world in body and mind, and the desperation to reclaim any sense of self possession, even when it’s violent and taboo 
• A ton of symbolism about reproduction, rebirth and motherhood as the trio is reborn naked & pregnant in a new world of their own making
• The protagonist’s mantra — “Survive, whatever it takes”  — as it carried her through all she endures is one that’s going to stay with me

• About social conformity and the inescapable pressure to participate in patriarchy and capitalism
• With the convenience store as a microcosm of society, it delves into body politics & bio-power — “A convenience store is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated”
• Also connects ableism to capitalism, e.g. the MC being coded very strongly as autistic,  the expiry date for her body as a “useful tool” for work as she ages
• Had a lot of interesting set up but the message felt surface level
• This made me miss cheap & delicious Japanese 7-11 food so much