Project Bookshelf: SINDUS Kim

I haven’t started properly, but here’s a beautiful quote summarizing the difference between Sartre & Camus. From the introduction by Dr. James Wood: “Camus asked us to fight that imprisonment, if necessary wearily and repetitively; Sartre hoped that we could simply explode the prison.”

I haven’t started this one either, but I did buy myself the Korean translation of the text, just to see how a book about translation can be translated. Meta-translation, if you will. Isn’t it lovely?

“For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.” 10/10 — enough said.

To be paired with Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity & a loving acknowledgment to Sartre’s strange view on women.

(BTW: their story is fascinating. A whirling, open love life between the feminist & existentialist of a century. Beauvoir signing her letters off with Your charming Beaver to a guy who once said he finds ugly women offensive. Sartre’s other love triangle with Albert Camus & Wonda Kosakiewicz. Look it up!)

“잘 쓴 과학소설이란 제일 변화무쌍하고 제일 정신 나간 상상을 뉴스 보도처럼 진실하게 쓴 것이라고 나는 늘 생각했다. 과거의 기억은 언제나 진실하다. 나는 역사학자가 과거를 진실하게 기록하는 것처럼 소설을 쓰고 싶다. 할 수 있을지는 별개의 문제지만. / I’ve always believed a well-written Sci-Fi novel should depict a most creative and insane imagination with the honesty of a news report. Memories of the past are always truthful. I want to write novels the way a historian truthfully records the past. Whether I can, however, is another question.” 

A literary magazine by HYQE – 하이퀴어, the queer club of Hanyang University. The title is an abbreviation of “중요한것은 꺾이지않는 ( )한마음,” which roughly translates to “What Matters Is Your Never-Changing Conviction To ( )”. 

Obtained at the 2024 Seoul Queer Culture Festival.

A literary magazine by QIS, Queer In Seoul National University. The title can be translated to distance, relationship, or between.I got this because they told me it contained the Judah/Jesus fanfic, and I was not disappointed. 

Obtained at the 2024 Seoul Queer Culture Festival.

I despise this book for being the single greatest collection of essays I have ever read. Camus clearly wasn’t trying to pioneer my CNF writing style forever, but he did anyway.

Translation: Women’s Sex-Book by Han Chae-Yun. A book about queer sex for women written by queer, sexual women. I purchased this because I am, frankly, fascinated by the language of sex. What better way to study the topic than to read for myself?

Obtained at the 2024 Seoul Queer Culture Festival.

One of two essay collections that brilliantly weaves together the critical, personal, and academic. Beautiful ideas expressed in gorgeous prose, and undeniably within my top five recommendations of all time.

“Nothing stays avant-garde forever; you have to keep moving.” 

The following quotes are indeed from the same book.

“What I know: when I met you, a blue rush began. I want you to know: I no longer hold you responsible.”

“For my part I have no interest in catching a glimpse of or offering you an unblemished ass or an airbrushed cunt. I am interested in having three orifices stuffed full of thick, veiny cock in the most unforgiving of poses and light.”

If On Freedom demonstrates that the critical, personal, and academic can be intertwined, Sister Outsider speaks to why they must be.

“And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into the sunlight against the body of a woman I love.”