Keum Suk Gendry-Kim

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim adapts a 1970 novel by Park Wan-suh into a graphic novel, injecting elements of the author's real life into an original framing sequence to emphasize the roman à clef nature of the work.

In the midst of the Korean War, a Korean woman in her early twenties works in a safe zone of Seoul at a booth at an American PX shilling souvenir portraits on scarves painted by some artisans who work on-site from snapshots provided by the clientele. She quickly develops a crush on one of the painters – who is a tortured soul destined to become become an acclaimed artist, not just a piecework craftsman – and pins on him all her dreams of escaping the dreary life of grief she shares with her widowed mother and compares to the lives of the other women around her.

It's a mild but engaging bit of coming-of-age drama playing out with some inevitable predictability but offering a rare and precious perspective of one America's several forgotten wars.

(Best Graphic Novels of 2023 Project: I'm trying to read all the books on the Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2023 list. Four down, six to go! How many have you read?)

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:

• The Naked Tree Lives Again / Ho Won-sook [daughter of Park Wan-suh]

• Prologue
• 1951
• Ok Huido
• Demands
• Chimpanzee
• Family
• Crossed Paths
• Women You Can Buy and Women You Can't Buy
• Crimson Gingko Leaves
• The Naked Tree
• Epilogue

• Artists I Have Loved / Keum Suk Gendry-Kim… (mais)

Gwija tiene 92 años y vive en Corea del Sur. Tras décadas de espera, desea reencontrarse con su hijo mayor. Lo perdió de vista en una columna de refugiados, huyendo del norte, mientras amamantaba al bebé que llevaba en brazos. En un encuentro auspiciado por la Cruz Roja, su amiga Jeong-Sun acaba de reunirse con su hermana pequeña después de sesenta y ocho años separadas. Gwija solo desea poder seguir sus pasos en una nueva edición.

En 1950, la guerra de Corea separó a familias enteras, que quedaron a uno y otro lado de una frontera infranqueable. A partir de las entrevistas que Keum Suk Gendry-Kim realizó a varios testimonios (entre ellos, su propia madre), La espera reconstruye el trauma de toda una generación de coreanos, ya casi olvidados, que siguen aguardando un reencuentro.… (mais)