For our Fall 2023 Feminist Book Club, we will be reading Hawon Jung’s Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women’s Rights Worldwide. The interest meeting will take place on August 30th, from 1-2 p.m. in the Women’s Center lounge, Talley 5210. We will distribute free copies of the book to participants. From there, we’ll meet on from 1-2 p.m. on 9/6, 9/13, 9/20, 9/21, with final overall discussion and celebration on 10/4 once we’ve finished the whole book! Click here to register.

The book follows a variety of South Korean feminist topics such as stalking, webcam spying, incest, sexual harassment, trans rights, birth rates, and sexual divisions of labor. Jung’s book documents how women are identifying and fighting back against misogyny and sexism, both at an interpersonal and structural level. The book also usefully shows more creative, utopian aspects of South Korean feminism that are a great lesson to feminists everywhere. Participants in this book club can expect to learn about feminist and South Korean history, to develop a sense of transnational feminist concerns, and identify their own feminist preoccupations.

Conversation and analysis will develop between participants across each meeting. As a content warning, the book discusses sexual violence in a variety of forms in detail. If you need more information before deciding to join, please email kgiffel@ncsu.edu.