Litany for the Long Moment

by Mary-Kim Arnold

Literary Nonfiction. Asian & Asian American Studies. The orphan at the center of LITANY FOR THE LONG MOMENT is without homeland and without language. In three linked lyric essays, Arnold attempts to claim her own linguistic, cultural, and aesthetic lineage. Born in Korea and adopted to the US as a child, she explores the interconnectedness of language and identity through the lens of migration and cultural rupture. Invoking artists, writers, and thinkers--Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Francesca Woodman, Susan Sontag, among others--LITANY FOR THE LONG MOMENT interweaves personal documents, images, and critical texts as a means to examine loss and longing.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Essays, Nonfiction, Adoption, Asian American

115 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2018

About the author

Mary-Kim Arnold is a poet, prose writer, and visual artist. Her work has been featured in a number of literary and art journals, including Tin House, The Georgia Review, Hyperallergic, and The Rumpus, where she was Essays Editor from 2013-2015. She was born in Seoul, Korea and was raised in New York. She holds graduate degrees from Brown University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Mary-Kim lives in Pawtucket, RI.

Reviews

[Bil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book unfolds like a dream where you are just a visitor but leaves you to wake up shaken and changed as if it was your own.

[Melissa Matthewson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning book. Deeply felt and lyrically smart. A beautiful inquiry into self and memory and longing. I’ll read it many times.

[James Maskell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arnold crafts a fascinating lyrical memoir about the search for her birth parents in Korea. She frames the work as a series of responses to a questionnaire provided by an organization that sends former Korean orphans back to their mother land to search for their families.

[Sandra Del Rio · Rating 5 out of 5]

”I feel loss. I feel absence.
I will name this absence mother…

I am writing into the rupture, the absences left there”

Incredible and harrowing and difficult and more

[Abbie Herrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Language creates us, but “Does language also destroy?” I will be thinking about that for the rest of my life… This book will probably cause some sort of existential crisis so I would def recommend

Super fast read because of the non-traditional format, probably could have finished in a day if I had some more time.

[The Library Dweller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful nonfiction book with photos. It is about how the author was adopted from Korea at a young age and brought to America. She was raised by a white family and struggles with a lack of memory about her birth parents and Korean culture. This book is an exploration of her questioning what she knows of her Korean past and culture through research that she has done, as well as her life in America and her relation to language, specifically the term "mother". The author also talks about other Korean American female artists and how their thoughts on Korea, art, and their experiences overlap with her own. This book is essentially a piece of art made up of related fragments that form a picture of one Korean American woman's life. I highly recommend if you want to know more about Korea and adoption from the point of the adoptee. Or if you want to hear the story of a female artist's life and her exploration of her Korean origins.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully crafted book that charts a course for reflections on identity, culture, the body, and so much more. In addition to reflective passages and photographs that document the author's passage from Korea to a white adoptive family in the United States, questionnaire prompts for reuniting separated families in Korea are used as a means to explore what it means to construct a view of self and world from fragments and absence. It incorporates excerpts from poets, philosophers, historians, and artists, notably Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, author of Dictée, and the life and work of Francesca Woodman, to juxtapose and merge with passages about her experiences and the interrogation of self, family, and culture.

"being visible is not the same as being seen."

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Woodman was twenty-one when she ended her own life, leaping from the roof of her apartment building in New York City. She was recognized, even at that young age, as having singular talent. Her photographs are haunting, enigmatic, resist easy classification. They stay with me. Her life story, the mystery at the center of it. The constant tension between seeing and being seen.

As a Korean child growing up in a white family, in a white neighborhood, what I was aware of most was being conspicuous. Rarely did I go unnoticed. Unquestioned.

But being visible is not the same as being seen.'

(p29)

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary-Kim Arnold was born in Korea and adopted at age 2 1/2 by an American woman of Portuguese ancestry. The titular long moment refers to the literal and metaphorical moment captured by photograph. This assemblage of photos, text, document, and poetic response serves as the essay's scaffolding. Within the cross-genre work, Arnold explores themes of language, image, feminism, and memory as she searches for her sense of 'mother' and self.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interestingly structured book. It is thought provoking and intelligent, but also moving and evokes thoughts regarding identity, place, and yearning beyond the set out facts. Though not put together as the usual straightforwardly linear narrative, that seems to be an essential part of the point.

[casey vieira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple and piercing in its language, but complex in it’s ideas, Mary-Kim Arnold’s work can easily be put as one of the most poignant and convicting contemporary voices. The way that she sculpts together the poetic notions of other artists and fits them into her own creates such a strong body of work.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The camera does not capture the image so much as the moment that it looks.

Repeating a word loudly and with more urgency will only get you so far.

Being visible is not the same as being seen.

Photographs provide "imaginary possession of a past that is unreal."

Compare what is no longer with what has been.

We bear the imprint of embodied experience.

What resists erasure?

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

"As a Korean child growing up in a white family, in a white neighborhood, what I was aware of most was being conspicuous. Rarely did I go unnoticed. Unquestioned.

But being visible is not the same as being seen.(p29)."

[chachi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of my class on hybrid work. With this being such a short book, every word feels incredibly intentional and does so much to orient and rework the text/images/archive as you read it--there's a real reciprocity in it. Very beautifully written.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely stunning.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, Arnold is truly a master of the craft.

[Danela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent document-poems book.

[Alaíde Ventura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sí está bueno pero podría estar mejor. No sé cómo explicarlo, no me dedico a esto.

[Owen Contri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an honest piece of art. Potent. Many shades of Maggie Nelson.

[Miguel Vega · Rating 5 out of 5]

When do I miss my mother? To miss her is to notice the loss or absence of—

To miss her, wouldn’t I need us to remember her?

I feel loss. I feel absence.

I will name this absence mother.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Elizabeth Hudak · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was nice and cool to see a creative memoir like this, but meh.

[J Yong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal

[Finn Bly]

often thinking about this book

[Yujin Han · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to savor every page of this book. Mary-Kim Arnold articulates deep and difficult questions and truths around having been adopted - done beautifully through poetic storytelling and vignettes of internal self reflection and external experience. Her words are a gift.