Reviews with content warning for War - The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes on

Reviews tagging 'War'

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes on by Franny Choi

20 reviews

michaelion's review

challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

4.5

I've been feeling very hopeless / miserable lately and even just the first poem made me be like wow there really is hope for the future / humanity. I paid $28 for this book and it was worth it.

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panickedhonking's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

A strange mix of the most tragic and heartbreaking poems which gave me a sense that there's something after every apocalypse. Exhaustive list of content warnings somehow non-exhaustive still.

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hanhantap's review

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

3.75

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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

A fabulous collection of poetry which I was able to enjoy in my preferred manner - reading in print while listening to the poet read her words to me. And what powerful words they were - looking at the dystopias that have been endured past, present and future but also the way humanity (even those groups that have suffered the most) somehow endure and carry on. Bleak in places but hopeful in others. As with all collections some hit me more than others but the ones that did, including those exploring the experiences of the “comfort women”, hit hard.

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sakeriver's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

When I first read the title of this book, the image that came to mind was of a world—or perhaps a people—callously looking away and carrying on as if nothing had happened, one world ignorant of or insensitive to the ending of another. And this reading is present in the poems, though the poems’ speaker can never look away, from a family’s partition, a loved one’s suicide, one empire and then another crushing and raping those it has colonized, the grief of past endings, and the terror of those unfolding now.

Yet the title also can suggest a world of persistence, of survival. A world that continues beyond the conflagration, coming out the other side. One where a future great-great-granddaughter might wonder about her ancestor’s life. Where life can still exist, even flourish. And this reading, too, is present in the poems.

The poems hold both of these worlds in their hands, and they allow—require—the reader to hold them, too. They cry out in pain and fear, and whisper gently in comfort, too. Not the comfort of exoneration or complacency, but the comfort of a stranger’s milk offered to wash the tear gas from our eyes, of the thought that perhaps this will not all be in vain. That perhaps some future child will say: “thank you for healing / what you could; for passing down what you couldn’t.”

I think I needed this book.

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