Reserve the Right

Yume Kim’s Reserve the Right is brassy, crass, foul-mouthed, and after several glasses of Southern Comfort in, ready to inform you that everything you thought you knew about Korean girls is about to be undone. Graphically rendered, unabashed, and holding no punches, the world of this book dreams a braver life for Asian American women who may find some vindication in Kim’s imagination that tells us of detached vaginas that become bright red foxes, of fury that might move us beyond a deep bodily violation, and other images sure to make you do a spit-take.
– Muriel Leung, author of Bone Confetti

Yume Kim’s extraordinary collection of poems, Reserve the Right, takes an unwavering, clear-eyed gaze on the violence of racism, the othering of people-of-color, the objectification of the Asian female body, class disparities, intergenerational trauma, and sexual assault. Kim’s poetry is simultaneously fierce and tender, like the vaginas she writes of, piercing fox teeth bound in soft flesh. Her poems inspire readers to feel their anger, to cry, to name the trauma. I’ve never read a collection as taut, as powerfully written with such fierceness and fight and courage, or as filled with such magic and biting humor, as Reserve the Right.
– Nancy Au, author of SPIDER LOVE SONG AND OTHER STORIES

Yume Kim’s writing is the voice inside of our heads that we often want to silence. We don’t know if this voice is the quintessential version of ourselves, or if our truth is one with the silencer or is, in fact, the silence in itself. No matter what the internal conflict is, this book is Yume’s truth written so honestly that it can be referred to as vulgar (as was Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye)–it may even be called ugly for the ways in which it makes us reflect on ourselves. But at its core, it is good and honest writing. Yume Kim is letting her readers know why she feels damaged, and she is proclaiming that even though these petals maybe bruised, they are still quite colorful–and there is beauty in picking oneself up off of the floor. There is beauty in surviving, even if our brains tell us otherwise.
– Vernon Keeve III, author of Southern Migrant Mixtape, 2019 winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award