Praise for Birthstones in the Province of Mercy

“Bo Hee Moon’s Birthstones in the Province of Mercy salvages a language for the unheard and unseen experiences of Korean American adoptees, whom neither America nor Korea have ever envisioned to be as vital, dynamic, and wide-ranging across poetics, literature, and advocacy around the globe. Moon exhumes a sense of mothering across the threshold of life, revealing our human lineage, perpetually renewed and destroyed by our own hands. In the bloody fight for belonging, Moon confronts linguistic, geographical, and cultural borders. With these poems, Moon joins the long and rich tradition of Korean and Korean American women’s poetry.”—E. J. Koh, author of The Liberators and The Magical Language of Others

“Bo Hee Moon’s new book is a treasure. In it, we have the privilege of experiencing the objects of memory and history — place, food, plants, objects  — gently presented by a dreamy consciousness that elaborates, questions, remembers. Each poem is a whole world, magically conjured from the American vernacular, often enriched by Korean hangul. This is the hopeful, sad, elegiac, and important work of an original poet of great talent and truth.”—Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams and Story of a Poem

“Birthstones in the Province of Mercy is a revelation, truly. Moon's language is singular and suffused with ancestral lyric intensity made new, related to Korea, adoption, violence, reclamation. Sometimes tender, sometimes searing, she writes, "Having energy/is the effect/of my sovereignty." The spirit here is strong and haunting. One of the finest books of poems I have read in years.“—Lee Herrick, author of In Praise of Late Wonder