A Cruelty Special To Our Species: Poems

"In this searing debut collection, Emily Jungmin Yoon uses poetry to trace the history of Korean “comfort women,” who were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers during World War II. Yoon’s poems understand this fate as both harrowing and also historically ordinary; they reverberate with a tenderness that enlarges them out of their place or moment and also invites us in to empathize, to consider the deep links between war and sexual violence. “On Wednesdays, it rains// for the children they bore. For the children/ they could not bear For the children/ they were.” This is a skilled, rich, mesmerizing opening to a new poetic career."