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

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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