Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ko Hyung-Ju and Ryan Estrada

 genre: graphic fiction (based on true events)

In South Korea in the early 80s, when Kim Hyun Sook begins her freshman year in college, all she wants to do is sink herself into literature and learning.  When she gets to campus though, what she finds is an explosive environment of government brutality and hidden terror where the books she wants to read aren't allowed and every event seems to have a double meaning.  In a country under the rule of a totalitarian regime, even the most common activities can have a subversive meaning - and Kim Hyan Sook ends up in the middle of it, whether she wants to or not.

This graphic novel brings to life the challenges students faced during a time when the South Korean government was cracking down hard on anything that could possibly be considered illicit.  Torture and cruelty, protests and underground newspapers - I really appreciated how in this book, the written word is so sacred, how ideas written down have immense power - both for the people who dare to write them and those who find a way to read them.  The graphic novel format works well here and the style fits the setting.  This book gave me much to think about in terms of the price of activism as well as the power in knowing who wrote the history you are reading.