The Wet Hex

by Sun Yung Shin

Sun Yung Shin leads her readers into the underworld, a witchy Garden of Eden where death blooms in many forms.

From an extended image of baby-as-exit-wound to her now-extinct Korean zodiac animal, the tiger, personal and environmental losses form the backdrop against which Sun Yung Shin examines questions of identity, evolution, and violence in The Wet Hex. Using archival materials from her own childhood immigration process—or was it the beginning of an exile?—Shin explores the ways that lives are weighed and bartered, and reflects on the pain of separation permeating the lives of so many Korean adoptees. Smashing the hierarchies of god and man, heaven and hell in favor shamanic wisdom, The Wet Hex brings us into the sublime moments of birthed experience—the beautiful and terrible all in one.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Adult, Social Commentary

120 pages, Paperback

First published June 14, 2022

About the author

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, spent her early years in the Chicago area, and is now based in Minneapolis. She is the award-winning author of thirteen books for adults and children. She is 2026 McKnight Foundation Fellow in Creative Prose and a recent finalist for a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her newest picture book Revolutions are Made of Love: The Story of Grace Lee Boggs & James Boggs is available for pre-order wherever books are sold, and will be available on November 4, 2025; her nonfiction book Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration is forthcoming in 2026. Her poetry has been included in the 2021 Gwangju Biennale and she was an invited presenter at the Korean Literary Translation Institute's 2018 conference on Korean diasporic literature. She is a frequent speaker and keynote presenter in community spaces and at academic conferences, most recently at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and University of Joensuu, Finland. She is on the advisory board for the Immigrant Writing Series at Black Lawrence Press. For more about her work, please visit sunyungshin.com or follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.

Reviews

[tessa s · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Let us talk about light. How does your mother
pronounce it. How does your father bury it.
How does your brother borrow against it,
betting everything God promised."

This collection of poems is haunting and dazzling in a way that does not evade the seriousness and sorrow inherent to most of the themes Sun Yung Shin is tackling. Even more exciting that the lyricism Shin treats all their subjects with, is the intentionality behind word choices. The prologue explains that “hex” was originally a term for witch that holds no male equivalent. She ties it to witch, then to hag, then to “repulsive old woman”. It all comes together to unpack 'womanhood' in a powerful way.

The collection is dedicated to castaways: girls, women, daughters, orphans, seventh children, refugees, immigrants; and the ways one can be some/all of those identities at once. This piece is an ode to the strength in castaways that hosts a complex narrative of revenge, acceptance, and self searching. It unpacks carefully war, family dynamics, myth, fact, and trauma. All of this coincides with an overarching liberatory narrative out of loss, death, living, and surviving. My favorite piece is a poetic epic accompanied with illustrations by Jinny Yu that tracks Baridegi, a kings seventh orphaned daughter, as she goes on a journey to save his life. This is a retelling of a Korean myth that tells the origins of the first shaman. Life and death take on new meaning as we navigate our way to the underworld and back without apology, and with vengeance.

I found myself reflecting on a few different similar and entirely different feminist queer environmental theory anthologies. Thus, if you end up enjoying coiling around this poetry series and are interested in following through with these lines of thought, I highly encourage Donna Haraways Staying with the Trouble and Ana Tsings Mushrooms at the End of the World. Looking at Haraway and Shin in conversation, Haraway writes of string figures as a theoretical concept for drawing in humans, animals, and all other unrelated related beings biotic and abiotic into intimate connectivity. Shin relates us to primitive mice, soldiers blood to fish leaping from rivers, an eye plucked like a ripe cherry by a bird, and creates endless destructive single lines of work.

All in all, I was sucked in, chewed up, and spit out by this poetry collection in the best ways. I will be seeking out more Sun Yung Shin pieces in the future.

“Often she hid herself at the sight of beasts, forgetting that she was a beast herself. And the bear was frightened by the sight of bears up in the mountains— and afraid of wolves, although her father had been changed into one.”

Thank you to Coffee House Press and Edelweiss for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In this city of God, all the stones rose surprised before me. The stigma of childhood marks my palms and feet. Orphaned by pain, I felt nothing."

"The Wet Hex" is a collection of poems about and for outcasts of various kinds, sometimes many united in one existence. About the terrible, painful, and alien found in those who don't quite belong for one reason or another, from the outside looking in. About struggle, internal and external, and in the strength to be found in the very same.

Parts of the book, some of the poems or parts of poems, were fantastic for me. Others I simply didn't get, either because I didn't understand or connect with the writing or because the format/layout of the poem worked against it for me. Consequently, I'm finding it difficult to rate the book as a whole. It's worth reading though.

"Mourn as you like, death is another migration."

[Pearl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very clever. And I somehow don’t mean that as a compliment.

The Wet Hex manages to include so many concepts I’m absolutely buck-wild for—spells, shamanism, post colonialism, the ancient world, ancestry work—and none of it made me feel anything.

At best I could read one of these heavily aestheticised poems and think ‘oh yeah, I see what she’s doing here, that’s a prettily juxtaposed set of words’ and then just continue reading, feeling absolutely nothing.

[Logan Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did a lot of this go over my head? Yes. That being said, I enjoyed this adventure into poetry and I think it was a great example of how unique and boundless poetry can be. Also, Sun Yung Shin is a badass and I appreciate that. My favorite poem is Tiger Fade In, Fade Out. There is a running theme this semester in how the language we use shapes how we value the world around us. I learned animism from Sun Yung last night, which means everything is alive!

[Lyzette Wanzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a small book, but not a quick read. Don't try to tear through it. You'll want to linger over each of the poems, rolling them over your tongue as you seek to taste each of the notes, grace notes, and undercurrents of the language. Having met the poet at an artists' residency did inform my apprehension of some of the work, primarily in the form of lending a personal insight into the poetry. If you're able to do so--and if you're not going to read the entire book in one sitting--I recommend reading and considering all of the poems in each section together, rather than hopscotching or reading some poems from one section and then starting (but not finishing) another. The language is exquisite, emphatic, evocative, and at times, enigmatic. Without further ado, I'll just say some of my favorites were Translate This Body into Everything (with a wonderful nod to Harryette Mullen), Gaze_Observatory_Threshhold, Whiteness: A Spell Thrown, and Unnatural Selection. Oh, and don't skip the appendix.

[Eule Luftschloss · Rating 4 out of 5]

trigger warning
child abandonment, mention of cancer, mention of suicide

Contents: Living in a culture that is not the one you grew up with, Korean funerary rites, mythology, boxes.

While I liked the content of the musings about whiteness, I found the editing with light grey writing on white background to be very in-accessible. Trying to figure out what it says gave me a headache and I stopped and jumped to the next part. It took me out of the reading flow.
Maybe having a black page and then light grey or white painting would have been a better idea.

Overall, this was hauntingly beautiful, and I am still amazed that I like poetry, if it has more topics than just (heterosexual) love. Some parts appealed more to me than others, but apart from the presentation problems mentioned above, there was not a single chapter I didn't care for.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

[ChanniLovesReading · Rating 2 out of 5]

This could probably be a more enjoyable read if I had more time to sit with the poetry and stories. I really liked section 3 and 5, but some of this definitely went over my head. If you are going to read, The Wet Hex, I suggest doing so with time and care. I hope to reread this again someday soon and maybe then I will like it a little more.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this poetry collection as part of a prompt in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. I'm sure others will find value in this text, but I'm not a big poetry fan. This collection just didn't resonate with me.

[melanie]

Unfortunately the electronic copy of this book affects some of the formatting which changes the way several poems are read, particularly Whiteness: A Spell Thrown.

The Wolvish Forage, In the House of Moths, and The Underworld Holds All Tethers were my favourite pieces.

[mia !! · Rating 5 out of 5]

sun yung my beloved

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excerpts:

Night is my mother. She wears many faces, has seen the glittering hand of God.
She pulls silver from the sky, names from the sea like fish.
There is enough. There is enough.
There is never enough.

(from “An Orphan Considers the Hand of God”)

—

Let us talk about light. How does your mother
pronounce it. How does your father bury it.
How does your brother borrow against it,
betting everything God promised.

(from “Behind This Door Is a Siberian Tiger”)

—

Wife. The kerosene of grief. It doesn’t age well. It degrades. / Grief is a kind of time.

(from “History of Domestication”)

[Kara Taghon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ethereal, morbid and a raw interpretation of Korean death culture with a feminist right hook. The imagery and layering of otherworldly folklore and how it connects to Shin’s heritage had me pausing and re-reading to soak in something new each time.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really really not my cup of tea. Held back by verbosity.

[SL · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Korean girls who slept with the dictionary so they would never be alone, so one day they could give birth to bruises and poetry.”

I first saw “The Wet Hex” on Alexander Chee’s story and was immediately entranced by the cover. Like, I’m obsessed with it. I really love snakes.

This poetry collection is really smart and dense. Dense as in there’s a lot to process and digest. I always find myself trying to rush through poetry but poetry cannot be rushed and it demands patience. I forced myself to read in small chunks and take breaks; I read aloud; I forced myself to go slow. I still feel like I have so much more to learn from these words, but that’s the best part about poetry, right? I love having to work for it to find meaning and come to my own conclusions.

“The Wet Hex” explores a lot of things–Koreanness, the myths in Korea, shamanism, religion, the underworld, intergenerational trauma and history, migration, identity. I marveled over Shin’s choices of words: the way they punch you in the gut and deeply cut something in you.

I really enjoyed Shin’s rendition of Princess Bari/Baridegi. I first discovered this myth when I was reading about Korean shamanism. In the myth, Bari is abandoned by her parents and discovered by an elderly couple who adopt her–and when they find her, she’s wrapped up in snakes. I wonder if the cover is a nod to that element in the myth. She's a transitional figure, connecting this world and the spirit world, and I feel that Shin is her own form of Bari in this poetry collection.

I really wish I could articulate something but I’m still sitting with it. It really felt like I was transitioning through something, traversing through the underworld with Shin. It’s really something powerful and intimate, perhaps even more amplified because I come from the same culture.

“I abandoned all ghosts who entered me with good intentions.”

Like, how do I move on from that line?

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

from 'Mines and Museums, or, the DMZ Is a Nature Preserve' (p7)

The wreck of human invention tastes of space
Most borders are invitation of affliction
Most borders make orphans
Mines wind down under a layer of earth like clocks and roots

The ghosts of burned trees dream in Russian
While in the multiverse the mannequins abandon their cosmonaut suits in the museums
What are these trenches but future (museums)

In the weaponry of space; all the earth is a mine

***

from 'Botany of Death' (p19)

Sister, I have written your funeral in flowers/I am the last
floriographer/No more deaths after yours after mine

***

from 'Gaze _ Observatory _ Threshold: A 바리데기 Baridegi Reimagining' (p37)

At the beginning of year fifteen, the king grew weaker and weaker.

The queen said, I can almost see through you. You are becoming
transparent in certain light; for example, the late afternoon.

Perhaps your spine is made of hammered gold.

The king said, I'm turning into air, into absence.

***

from 'The Wolvish Forage' (p59)

The poetics of wolfish space and the displacement of air with the hot breath of the future.

[Georg Herrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wet Hex is a collection where many of the poems feel like dreams realized in the world, filled with fragmented images and details that recur throughout the collection that tie it all together. Reading through some of the poems felt like reading a sort of spell.

My favorite section is the collaboration between Shin's poems and Jinny Yu's drawings. The starkness of the visual art and how well the poems and their written images play with the drawings felt captivating. There is a way that the drawings make the poems both more concrete and abstract. They allow the poems to go into a stranger, more literal sense in a way because the accompanying visuals themselves are both concrete and abstract. This is a book eminently worthy of multiple readings, and I expect when I return to this collection the poems will reveal even more.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a varied collection of poems. It includes sparse free verse poems as well as prose-style poems. There are a number of stream-of-consciousness poems that read like surreal free writing, but there’s also a narrative poem and a number of clean prose-like poems.

The poet is of Korean ethnicity, and her heritage and the experience of being a transplanted individual both feature prominently in her poems. (Though Greek Mythology is also about as common as Korea Folklore in the poems.] The poems also display a fascination with words and as well as with violence.

The poems are divided into five sections. Section three is unique in that includes the collection’s longest poem, a narrative poem, which is presented with some simple, geometric artworks.

I enjoyed reading this collection, it employs clever language and interesting approaches to verse, both among the more cryptic, freeform entries and the neater, more “business-like” poems.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough and complex collection to get through, and I have to admit that I’m not sure if I got everything. These poems focus on life and death, loss and survival, mostly, as well as meditations on Korean rituals and folklore. There’s a kind of quiet grief that runs through these poems that make each word weigh heavy.

One thing I didn’t fully understand was why Korean words were included with their romanized forms following after, but that could have been a creative choice— That’s just an aside, though, and not something most people would be concerned with, I’d imagine.

Some favorites: “I Wandered into a Mass Extinction Event,” “Gaze _ Observatory _ Threshold: A 바리데기 Baridegi Reimagining,” and “Tiger | Fade In, Fade Out”

Read for the Sealey Challenge.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 21 of #TheSealeyChallenge 2023. The Wet Hex by Sun Yung Shin published by Coffee House Press.

@SealeyChallenge @coffeehousepress @Coffee_House_ @sunyungshin

#thesealeychallenge2023 #sealeychallenge #poetry

Intelligent, serious, and insightful. These are intensely personal poems but not private. Beautiful lyricsm.

Some of my favorite moments:

We are water, we are rivers of descent; gravity is inevitable yet grievable.

I wore a belt made of ice; I grew with child, a child of ice and all along—my mother: a glacier, a shipwreck

A poet can make the sun jealous.

At night I dream of an infant made of flour and heat.

[Quoth the Robyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

"what was grown from the body must accompany the body."

The Wet Hex by Sun Yung Shin puzzles together ideas of immigration, parenthood, death, tradition, and so many more topics. I am a huge fan of atmospheric poetry, but I felt what was missing most in this collection was a grounding point. I kept searching for this anchor in every poem and came up short. Shin's use of language felt flimsy and unmanageable, the surplus of subjects she explores quickly become tiredly overwhelming, and she does not create breathing room in this collection.

[Courtney Niederer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Wet Hex is a book of poetry, which I am not good at interpreting. There were sections that were interesting and one that contained a story within the book. Though it did not appeal to me, I'm sure it will have a large following. I'd love to know some of the interpretations. It flowed nicely. 2 stars

Challenges:
Goodreads - 121/110
ABC - letter Y

[naga · Rating 4 out of 5]

actual rating: 3.5 stars

Thank you to Edelweiss+ for providing me an eARC.

This is a collection of poetry which confused and amazed me at the same time. I didn't get what some of the poems trying to imply, but the ones (I assume) I understand are great. Some poetry really has creative format which I really like.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coffee House Press was kind enough to pass this along in their mailer with Saeed Jones’ newest collection, and I’m honestly really happy that they did, because I probably wouldn’t have heard of this otherwise. Shin’s poetry is fantastic, juxtaposing official adoption and immigration documents and writing about grief and violence and belongings against topics like Columbus, the Metamorphoses, and Korean folk tales. It’s visceral and queer and hard to read in the best kind of way. Definitely highly recommended, and out now - pick it up if you see it!

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

“i made a womb out of a sparrows nest, made every meal out of moss and the scorned end of each hour. i used my palm as a cutting board, made a child out of forbidden grammar.”
“i let the wolves out of my mouth at noon and swallowed them for dinner”
“i abandoned all ghosts who entered me with good intentions”

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A poetry collection revelling in collective myth and cycles of pain and memory within family systems. Steeped in Korean myth and culture, while reckoning with the liminal nature of immigrant life, this collection is a standout.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

We taught you how to live, how to blend into the evening forest floor; how the will to survive is a mantle to wear and discard.

An interesting collection of poems.

[Trigger Warning Database]

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child abandonment
Suicide mentioned
Cancer mentioned

[Diana Arterian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sun Yung Shin employs myth as a means to interrogate abandonment, fealty, family, death, identity—this list can go on and on. Her book put me under a spell with its images that vibrated with power.

[Beatrice]

Backwards Hebrew… lol. Apart from that mistake, an interesting series of meditations on the castaway.

[Erin L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words cannot adequately describe the beauty of the words in this collection of poems.