Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s “Grass” and The Power of Comics

Last fall, I picked up Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Waiting, a graphic novel, loosely based on Gendry-Kim’s mother, as sisters, separated from one another during the Korean War, reunite during one of the family reunions between North and South Korea. Gendry-Kim’s writing and illustrations powerfully depict the emotions of the sisters, and her use of the graphic medium, through black and white illustrations, conveys the pain and suffering of the individuals in the narrative. After reading Waiting, I knew I wanted to read more of Gendry-Kim’s work, and as I constructed the syllabus for “The Reverberations of World War II,” I knew I wanted to add her graphic novel Grass to the list of texts that students could choose from for their final project.

Grass takes a similar narrative strategy to Waiting, with Gendry-Kim placing herself within the narrative as she interviews Okseon Lee, a woman forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. Lee details her childhood and her experiences as a comfort woman for Japanese soldiers during the war, ending with her activism seeking reparations and recognition of Japanese atrocities against Lee and others. Just as she does in Waiting, Gendry-Kim’s juxtaposition of words and images conveys the pain and suffering that Lee endured at the hands of countless individuals, and specifically at the hands of Japanese…