A review by venneh
Hardly War by Don Mee Choi

4.0

This is one of Don Mee Choi’s first works that isn’t her translating someone else’s work, and mainly focuses on her father’s experiences in the Korean War. This one was a bit harder for me to follow, mainly due to knowing only vague outline information about the Korean War. Probably the most interesting piece in here is Hardly Opera, which tackles her father’s experience through the form of Chinese opera and the use of flower language to refer to things like Johnson’s Daisy Girl ad, Gertrude Stein, the Republic of Korea’s flag, and others (which I only really understood after reading the end notes) to talk about her father’s experience in the war as a reporter. Definitely worth a look through.