Book Club: Flowers of Fire
A look at South Korea's new sex wars
What happens when men and women wind up at war with each other?
What could our future look like if men and women wind up in separate social bubbles with divergent views of the good life and simmering resentment?
I’m excited to announce that, in February, I’ll be leading a book club for Hawon Jung’s Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women' s Rights Worldwide.
South Korea’s 4B movement has attracted more attention since the election. The ‘B’ is for negatory “bi” that begins each pledge. The four refusals that 4B women make are:
no sex with men (비섹스; bisekseu),
no giving birth (비출산; bichulsan),
no dating men (비연애; biyeonae), and
no marriage with men (비혼; bihon).
The idea of women opting out of a toxic (or percieved to be toxic) culture is as old as the Lysistrata. Some of the dynamics in Korea are pretty far from the American experience, some will feel familiar, and some seem like glimpses of a possible future, one I’d like to avert.
This book club will be a partnership with
and will culminate in a live Zoom book chat (to be scheduled).The book has four sections, so we’ll tackle one per week:
Flowers of Fire Reading Schedule
Week of Feb 3-7
Introduction + PART 1: #MeToo, #WithYou
Week of Feb 10-14
PART 2: Where Did All the Girls Go?
Week of Feb 17-21
PART 3: My Life Is Not Your Porn
Week of Feb 24-28
PART 4: My Body + Conclusion
On Mondays,
or I (or both of us!) will have an essay at Fairer Disputations. I’ll post over here with a little more fodder for discussion on Tuesdays, and we’ll do periodic roundups of reader comments and responses.I think I’ve successfully pitched
on reading along too, and if you blog at your own substack, please send me the link and/or tag me!Use this week and next to order the book and/or place a library hold, and, ideally, to invite a friend.
There will be a prize of some sort for anyone who has a complementary IRL book club. Two friends discussing the book in person counts as a book club. A married couple both reading the book together definitely counts.
Let me know if you have any questions and nominate other writers and thinkers you hope I can pitch on joining in for the discussion.
Long shot here, but for ideas for interesting folks to join your discussion - would Elizabeth Oldfield be interested? Author of "Fully Alive", as I'm sure you know.
A very good book about women's response to male violence is Pat Barker's 2018 novel, the Silence of the Girls . It's the Iliad (Trojan War) retold from the point of view of the women. The style is awkward but the perspective on Homer's founding narrative of western civilization, the Iliad, is haunting.