The third book of poetry from Sun Yung Shin, which mines literature, science fiction, myth and science in examinations of family, identity and the significance of being an immigrant.
...a book that masterfully brings together disparities as far ranging as Asterion and Korean history, language and media, science fiction and science fact ... Unbearable Splendor will be difficult to shelve in a single space—perhaps even impossible. Fortunately, this is to the book’s betterment ... It would be difficult not to be captivated by Unbearable Splendor, at not just what the book accomplishes, but also for its sheer audacity ... very true, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, unbearably human.
...[a] strange and captivating hybrid ... flexibility and willingness to interrogate even what poetry and art themselves consist of make Unbearable Splendor read like an irresistible invitation to test out and redefine notions of race, gender, and the rules that govern everything from creative writing to the political economy ... she joins the exhilarating ranks of poets who cross the borders of genre to use poetry/the lyric as essay ... an incredibly compact use of commanding and vibrant language which coheres into work that feels restless and deft, as cerebral as it is emotional.
While unabashedly scholarly, Unbearable Splendor is heartbreaking. The reader witnesses an orphaned individual urgently trying to position herself in the world and constantly failing, though there is something productive in the trying.
