Friendships are fractured, people are jailed and beaten, families are threatened and the reader is reminded that freedoms and using your voice is a very precious thing that can literally cost you your life. This is no lighthearted read, as the violence of political struggles and the consequences of speaking out against the State are front and center in this work. This graphic novel, aimed mostly at a YA readership, works as a wonderful introduction into the spirit of revolutionary organizing as well as a primer of South Korean politics that are often overlooked in Western education and is just as enjoyable for adults as well.

‘ The ingredients for this book were true stories’, she tells us at the end, but their names and stories have been cut up, amalgamated and expanded upon for privacy and security.

Set in South Korea during the Fifth Dynasty in 1983, the book serves as a memoir of author Kim Hyun Sook’s time in college during a time of intense protests against the government. In Banned Book Club, Hyun Sook shares a dramatic true story of political division, fear-mongering, anti-intellectualism, the death of democratic institutions, and the relentless rebellion of reading.īanned Book Club is a story not only a coming of age story about finding your voice, but also about finding the strength in collective voices against oppression. And as Hyun Sook soon discovered, in a totalitarian regime, the delights of discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence as the walls close in. Instead she found herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. When the handsome young editor of the school newspaper invited her to his reading group, she expected to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Scarlet Letter.

In this charged political climate, with Molotov cocktails flying and fellow students disappearing for hours and returning with bruises, Hyun Sook sought refuge in the comfort of books. This was during South Korea's Fifth Republic, a military regime that entrenched its power through censorship, torture, and the murder of protestors. But literature class would prove to be just the start of a massive turning point, still focused on reading but with life-or-death stakes she never could have imagined. After acing her exams and sort-of convincing her traditional mother that it was a good idea for a woman to go to college, she looked forward to soaking up the ideas of Western Literature far from the drudgery she was promised at her family’s restaurant. When Kim Hyun Sook started college in 1983 she was ready for her world to open up.

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook