Kim Myeong-sun
Rutgers University Press
8 September 2026
112
eBook - PDF
Poetry
ARC via Edelweiss
Kim Myeong-sun is Korea's first published woman writer. Fruit of Poems (생명의 과실: 김명순 시선) is the first book-length, Korean-to-English translation of her poetry. Kim’s poems offer a raw portrait of 1920s–30s Korea, driven by her personal experiences of sexual assault, misogynistic journalism and criticism, displacement, and poverty during the Japanese colonial occupation (1910– 1945). Alongside feminist and anti-colonial critique, Kim also writes about sapphic desire, familial affection, and nature, in styles that range from the traditional to the experimental. While Kim’s work was erased from the canon by Korea’s misogynistic literary establishment, Fruit of Life celebrates the legacy of Kim’s radical, versatile poetry, which paved the way for contemporary Korean women writers like Kim Hyesoon and Han Kang.
I was drawn to this collection (despite not being a big poetry reader) by the promise of a bilingual English-Korean edition. As someone learning Korean, I thought it would be fascinating to compare the two versions, seeing what I could understand from the Korean and then seeing how the translation mirrored or differed from my interpretation. However, I was disappointed that I was unable to easily do this, because the book is presented not with the two versions of the poem side by side but with all the translations first and all the original Korean text afterwards. With a print copy you could try to flit back and forth, but that was not possible reading an eBook. I did find the decision to split the poems in that way a little misguided, but perhaps they were thinking people would only want to read either in English or in Korean, rather than being interested in both. As for the poems themselves, they were interesting works and did express a range of feelings from the point of view of occupation, gender disparity and a longing for something more. I am giving the book 4 stars. It is a wonderful opportunity to be able to read these works, but I do wish they had organised the collection differently.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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