Body Facts

Author: Joey S. Kim Publisher: Diode Editions (2021) Body Facts tells the story of a speaker who is Korean, American, woman, and body. It weaves together Korean history and aesthetics, the speaker’s childhood and family stories, U.S. foreign policy with North Korea, and the things we do and shouldn’t do to our bodies. “Our bodies hold and hide our histories. Line by line, Joey Kim breaks us open to expose our yearnings, secrets, and untold treasures, saving us from our own fortress of history, propriety, and shame. Kim’s Body Facts is our needed revelation.” –Min Jin Lee “'What does it mean to inhabit a body in a country where that body is perceived as a ‘fearful symmetry’? In her poignant and vivid Body Facts, Joey Kim stitches the story of a body, her body, taking it back from the knives of Western sight, and in the process, stitches back the seen and unseen legacy of ancestors and family: her Harabeoji, Halmoni, Umma, and Appa. She asks: ‘how do you spend one language and save / ano