 Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada, illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju.
This graphic memoir tells the story of Kim Hyun Sook's college activism under a repressive regime in South Korea in the 1980s. She arrives young and naive, only interested in getting the college education that no one else in her family ever got, and the student protests confuse and frighten her. A friend recruits her to the book club, which turns out to be a cover for pro-democracy activism and an underground newspaper while they study forbidden books. In and out of class, she discovers that literature and other arts are not as neutral and apolitical as they seem. Some of her professors and fellow students seem sympathetic...but there's always the chance that they're government informants, willingly or otherwise. The dark parts of the story are not sugarcoated. Some of her friends are arrested and tortured. One is sexually assaulted (though it isn't shown on the page). One of the most jarring images is the vicious interrogator overheard on a loving phone call with his wife and child. The final chapter brings us to the present: the regime has fallen, but the current one has its own problems. Kim Hyoon Sook and her friends, now middle aged, are shown talking with young student activists about the importance of remembering history and fighting for change. It seems all the more relevant today. Popsugar Reading Challenge: About a book club. 52 Book Club Challenge: No quotation marks (yes, I shamelessly used a graphic novel to dispense with this category). Booklist Queen Challenge: About injustice. This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Bookish.
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