A Cruelty Special to Our Species by Emily Jungmin Yoon

Moving readers through time, space, and different cultures, and bringing vivid life to the testimonies and confessions of the victims,Yoon takes possession of a painful and shameful history even while unearthing moments of rare beauty in acts of resistance and resilience, and in the instinct to survive and bear witness. “What is a body in a stolen country,” Yoon asks. In wrenching language, A Cruelty Special to Our Species unforgettably describes the brutalities of war and the fear and sorrow of those whose lives and bodies were swept up by a colonizing power, bringing powerful voice to an oppressed group of people whose histories have often been erased and overlooked.

In her arresting collection, urgently relevant for our times, poet Emily Jungmin Yoon confronts the histories of sexual violence against women, focusing in particular on Korean so-called “comfort women,” women who were forced into sexual labor in Japanese-occupied territories during World War II. Author of A CRUELTY SPECIAL TO OUR SPECIES (EccoHarperCollins 2018) & chapbook ORDINARY MISFORTUNES (Tupelo Press 2017). Moving readers through time, space, and different cultures, and bringing vivid life to the testimonies and confessions of the victims,Yoon takes possession of a painful and shameful history even while unearthing moments of rare beauty in acts of resistance and resilience, and in the instinct to survive and bear witness.A piercing debut collection of poems exploring gender, race, and violence from a sensational new talent

A Cruelty Special to Our Species by Emily Jungmin Yoon