Appeared on best of the year lists from The New York Times, The
Guardian, and more! Winner of The Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best
Print Comic of the Year!
Grass is a powerful antiwar graphic novel, telling 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 twentieth-century Asian history.
Beginning in Lee's childhood, Grass shows the lead-up to the war from
a child's vulnerable perspective, detailing how one person experienced
the Japanese occupation and the widespread suffering it entailed for
ordinary Koreans. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee's strength in
overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. 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.
The cartoonist Gendry-Kim's interviews with Lee become an integral part
of Grass, forming the heart and architecture of this powerful
nonfiction graphic novel and offering a holistic view of how Lee's
wartime suffering changed her. Grass is a landmark graphic novel that
makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.
