Ji yoon Lee
....
The United States of America didn't want me.
My parents couldn't take me.
The wheels kept turning,
and the flight to Dallas, Texas is currently on time.
I never caught up with the time difference.
My messed up sense of time tells me
that Baby Visa Denied is still crying in the basement.
My unwantedness has totally messed up my root chakra, man --
My pelvic floor chakra.
The lonely wheel, with no traction,
keeps on spinning and spinning ...
....
My messed up imprinting.
The baby ducklings follow the Roomba.
Isn't that cute
their misguided survival instinct.
The ducklings are so fluffy
when they fall through the sewer grate
you laugh.
There's a reason baby seals are clubbed.
There's a reason veal is delicious.
Tender young flesh is attractive.
Love me tender,
Love me sweet.
....
(Extracts from Ji yoon Lee's Baby Visa Denied that I found in the anthology women: poetry: migration, ed. Jane Joritz-Nakagawa (2017))
Ji yoon Lee: born in South Korea (Republic of Korea), lives in Houston.
root chakra: the Muladhara in Hindu Tantrism, seated in the pelvic region, foundation of the energy body.
Roomba: robot vacuum cleaner.
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Robert Grotjohn, "Translating Resistance: Don Mee Choi, Jiyoon Lee, Eunsong Kim, and Others", English Language and Literature Vol. 65 No. 3 (2019) pp. 455-75 :
Very informative piece on the rhizomatic connections within Korean American feminist poetry, including a detailed discussion of Ji yoon Li's collection Foreigner's Folly (Coconut Books, 2014). I can't resist requoting the passage Grotjohn quotes:
I am fresh off the boat, and now I am fresh meat. I am fresh meat, but I am also a butcher of their language . . . Forgive my meattongue, forgive my soul. Forgive me for I have sins.
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Ji yoon Li's ferocious first chapbook IMMA (Radioactive Moat, 2012) is available in full online:
The opening lines:
I’m ok being your diversity plan;It is my mode of existence: It is my mode of insistenceThere is the cityplan under my belt of explosives;It is my mode of modification: It is my mode of fornicationDefamation of American flag: Defecation of unidentifiable flagAn unidentifiable body surfaces on the level of cheap alliterationPlease do not litter; be a good noncitizen!Please use the container provided; be a good conartistIs it ok that I am your diversity case? Is it ok that I am your basket case?....
Another extract from IMMA:
Imma single ready to commingle....It is impossibru to brew the coffee without panic attack& perhaps pertaining your voicemail is impossible to raincheckdoublecheck on my penny attack; doublecheck on my fannypackw/ my mailorderbride my cumulative fines O you so fine accrues the crew ofsailors w/ moneyorder carrier pigeon on my special occasion intensivetreatment on my dear roasted dove whose feeling is hurt....i have sewn my sleeve up my ass and it is impossible to unshove what isshoveled down the chimney don't squeeze the quail I have qualms aboutcalling spade a spademy lucky bunny paw will avenge for my soul my middle earth mycommonground of all the landfill mining crew
Review of Ji yoon Lee's IMMA by Min Kang in New Delta Review:
Review of Ji yoon Lee's IMMA by Jai Arun Ravine in Lantern Review:
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Other poetry collections:
Ji yoon Lee's chapbook Funsize/Bitesize (Birds of Lace, 2013).
Ji yoon Lee's collection Foreigner's Folly: A Tale of Attempted Project (Coconut Books, 2014).
Paul Cunningham writes a bit about it here (Fanzine, March 2014):
(See also Robert Grotjohn's article, referenced earlier.)
Ji yoon Lee introduces Foreigner's Folly and reads some of the poems. She also talks about the "prequel" Baby Visa Denied, which sounds like it may be another full length collection, hopefully soon.
*
Ji yoon Lee has translated Kim Yideum's poetry, and also the novel Blood Sisters.
Kim Yideum's Cheer Up, Femme Fatale, translated by Ji yoon Lee, Don Mee Choi and Johannes Göransson, was published by Action Books in February 2016.
Review by Megan Milks (Fanzine, May 2016):
There is also Poems of Kim Yideum, Kim Haengsook, and Kim Min Jeong translated by Don mee Choi, Johannes Göransson, Ji yoon Lee and Jake Levine (Vagabond Press, 2017)
Two poems by Kim Yideum translated by Ji yoon Lee, in Cordite Review, 1 February 2018:
Here's one of them:
Wet BookI walk along the street that is filling up with water. The evening outruns me like a truck covered in a dark blue tarp. The dark and narrow alley – is this the right way? My room on low ground easily sinks under lukewarm water, even when it is not full tide. I begin anew my search for home.Remember to take the coat off by the door. I draw a line on my chest to measure the water level today. Humans are bound to leak. When everyone blinked at once, my bed floated away on their tears. The books that I kept in the bathtub didn’t get wet.I sit on the chair floating in water, and I sit at the desk floating in water, and I write alphabets the way I drink water from rain boots. The tied up bundle of letters is a face filled with tears. Your cat won’t calm down. She trembles on the bosom of the wet book.
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Three more poems by Kim Yideum translated by Ji yoon Lee, published in Asymptote:
Another Kim Yideum poem, "I Believe In This World", translated by Don Mee Choi, Johannes Göransson and Ji yoon Lee, published in Modern Poetry in Translation in 2016:
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Ji yoon Lee interviewed by Jacob Silkstone in Asymptote (June 2019) about her translation of Kim Yideum's novel Blood Sisters (Deep Vellum, 2019).
Here she's talking about a place in the novel where Yeoul, the protagonist, says "I speak with my own mouth, so I will address others on my own terms ...."
The default system here [in ROK] is to pretend the power dynamic doesn’t exist and to politely perform the appropriate version of intimacy. But Yeoul rejects that. I see “I speak with my own mouth. . .” as a really powerful moment where she rejects societal imperatives in the language system. It is as simple as that: I am making sounds with my mouth to speak the language, so it is my language, and I speak it on my own terms.I don’t think I would call this a struggle unique to Korea—performing and emoting something different from what you feel inside, being pressured by the power dynamic. That’s why art can be a universal refuge for our internal truth.We make art so that we don’t forget what our truth is. That is how I approached my writing too. I wanted to really tap into what “I” am feeling, even when one is living in a situation where expressing that truth would be harmful.
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Labels: Ji Yoon Lee, Kim Yideum
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