For her visionary and compelling storytelling in Grass, Gendry-Kim has earned well-deserved accolades and recognition, including, most recently, the 2020 Krause Essay Prize from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing program. Through exquisite ink-brush drawings, insightful visual metaphors, in-depth interviews and research, the author depicts Ok-sun’s hopes, loss, grief, anger and resilience with incredible depths of empathy, compassion and beauty. In each panel of every page, the reader can feel cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s urgent call for ending all atrocities and wars through her re-telling of Ok-sun’s ordeals, from growing up poor in rural Korea to her eventual coercion into becoming a “comfort woman” (a euphemism coined by the Japanese Imperial Army). Powerful, engrossing and heart wrenching, Grass is a multi-award winning non-fiction graphic novel chronicling the life story of “Granny Lee” Ok-sun, a Korean survivor of sexual enslavement by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Grass is translated from Korean by Janet Hong, an award-winning writer and translator based in Vancouver.Written and illustrated by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim Grass is a landmark graphic novel that makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.

Cartoonist Gendry-Kim's interviews with Lee become an integral part of Grass, forming the heart and architecture of this powerful non-fiction graphic novel and offering a holistic view of how Lee's wartime suffering changed her.

Grass is painted in a black ink that flows with lavish details of the beautiful fields and farmland of Korea and uses heavy brushwork on the somber interiors of Lee's memories. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee's strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. Beginning in Lee's childhood, Grass shows the leadup to World War II from a child's vulnerable perspective, detailing how one person experienced the Japanese occupation and the widespread suffering it entailed for ordinary Korean folk. Grass is a powerful anti-war graphic novel, offering up firsthand the life story of a Korean girl named Okseon Lee who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during the second World War - a disputed chapter in 20th century Asian history.

Grass keum suk gendry kim