Blood Sisters - by Kim Yideum (Paperback)

About the Book

A woman in 1980s Korea struggles to understand her identity and live an authentic life in the face of injustice.

Book Synopsis

A woman in 1980s Korea struggles to understand her identity and live an authentic life in the face of injustice.

Review Quotes

Chosen as Asymptote's May Book Club Pick!
Finalist for Big Other's Book Award for Translation
"Yideum is primarily a poet and this is evident in the texture and sensuality of her prose, skillfully translated by Ji Yoon Lee." - Asymptote
"Unapologetically feminist... The novel has as much to say about the contemporary #MeToo era as it does '80s South Korea." - Spectrum Culture
"This slim novel juggles so much: same-gender attraction, violence against women, abusive families, and more. This tightly-wound, exacting story is set during the late 80's, a time of student activism and suppression in Korea. Jeong Yeoul is unforgettable and mesmerizing as she navigates college life, gender norms, politics, and death." - Anna, Bookseller at City Lights Bookstore
"As she deals with the traumas of a family member's death, a friend's suicide, and her own sexual assault, there is something powerfully irrefutable about the narrator's untethered unloading of confessions, observations, and scathing rage. Lee's multifaceted translation captures the character's contradictions-expressing the uncontrollable forces of sorrow, apathy, confusion-and the hope that having a voice is a way to freedom." - Bonnie Chau, Public Books

About the Author

Kim Yideum, an outspoken feminist hailed as one of the greatest poets in South Korea today, whose works in translation include Cheer Up, Femme Fatale! (Action Books, 2015) and Hysteria (Action Books, 2019). Having received her PhD with a dissertation on Korean feminist poetics, she has taught at Gyeongsang National University, served as a culture columnist, and has hosted a poetry radio show. She has received numerous awards for her poetry, including the Poetry & the World Literary Award (2010), the Kim Daljin Changwon Award (2011), the 22nd Century Literary Award (2015) and the Kim Chunsoo Award (2015). Ms. Kim owns and operates Café Yideum, a bookstore café, in Ilsan, a satellite city of Seoul. Blood Sisters, originally published to great renown in South Korea in 2011, is her debut novel.

Jiyoon Lee is a poet and translator whose most recent publications include Poems of Kim Yideum, Kim Haengsook, and Kim Minjeong: The Collection of Contemporary Korean Poetry (Vagabond Press, 2017). Her translation of Kim Yideum's book of poetry, Cheer Up, Femme Fatale (Action Books, 2015), was shortlisted for Lucien Stryk Prize. She is also the author of Foreigner's Folly (Coconut Books, 2014), Funsize/Bitesize (Birds of Lace, 2013), and IMMA (Radioactive Moat, 2012). She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame.