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Human memory exists because survival demands it. Memory allows our brains to avoid re-learning the same things, conserving the energy we need to survive, evolve, and progress. If our bodies were so “wisely designed,” why are we incapable of eternally remembering the pain of history, instead repeating the same mistakes over and over?
Human memory exists because survival demands it. Memory allows our brains to avoid re-learning the same things, conserving the energy we need to survive, evolve, and progress. If our bodies were so “wisely designed,” why are we incapable of eternally remembering the pain of history, instead repeating the same mistakes over and over?
Human memory exists because survival demands it. Memory allows our brains to avoid re-learning the same things, conserving the energy we need to survive, evolve, and progress. If our bodies were so “wisely designed,” why are we incapable of eternally remembering the pain of history, instead repeating the same mistakes over and over?
The reason I began reading the works of Korean author Han Kang wasn’t out of curiosity about the first Asian Nobel laureate in literature, but rather because of a story I read about her refusing a post-award press conference—an act of protest against the ongoing, inhumane war and “massacre” in Gaza. After finishing her book The Vegetarian, I didn’t find an answer to my small question; instead, I encountered the suffocating oppression often present in Korean literature—a depth so profound, so sharp, that I, someone who fancies myself good at reading comprehension, struggled to grasp its meaning. But on the first night I started reading Human Acts—Chinese version is named Do not say goodbye—I suddenly found the answer that had lingered in my mind.
Han Kang’s gripping narrative technique is laid bare in Human Acts. Her details, almost like vivid cinematic shots, project straight from her pen into the reader’s mind, as though I were witnessing the very images in her mind. Though the story begins with a nightmare, and “massacre” is woven into its theme from the outset, the tale unfolds not with oppression but in a way that drags readers headfirst into the protagonist's world. As I continued, I began to understand why the Nobel would go to her.
At the same time, Human Acts also revealed another answer to me: why she would forego the chance to stand in the world’s brightest spotlight for a cause happening so far away in Gaza. This wasn’t posturing, nor pretense, nor empty anguish. How could someone whose work so deeply embeds the dark tragedies inflicted upon her own people ignore the suffering playing out on another distant stage of horror? Just as, having seen my own child gravely injured, I find myself tearing up at even the thought of a young child in pain, so, too, must Han Kang feel her heart wrenched by the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. Writers may wield no weapons, but the pen is their only armament. Though she cannot shield the dying lives in a far-off place, at least she can, with Nobel’s reach, cry out in silent protest on their behalf.
When it comes to “massacre,” the world remembers the Holocaust inflicted upon the Jewish people by the Nazis. Yet few people outside of China remember the massacre in Nanjing, where hundreds of thousands were killed by the Japanese. As a Chinese person, even I scarcely knew that beyond Nanjing, other parts of Asia suffered similar bloody massacres on those same dates. Human Acts opened up memories of all I’d read about the Nanjing Massacre, evoking a profound resonance that left a lasting impact.
Every name etched on a massacre memorial once belonged to a life—a parent, a child, a young person with plans, an elder yearning for their children’s happiness. These are not mere characters or numbers; they were living, breathing souls. In the mouths of protestors outside BlackRock headquarters reciting the names of thousands killed in Gaza, every name recalled a life with a story, no different than ours—a story written one moment at a time, filled with flesh, blood, and spirit. Yet a single bullet, a single bomb, can erase all of them in an instant. I can’t help but ask: in the eyes of those who kill, what does life mean?
Reading Human Acts didn’t move me to tears; it filled me with guilt, a chill like that endured by its protagonist in a blizzard—a coldness and grief for humanity's ease in forgetting history. Without memory, the existence of every life becomes a mirage, and so too will our own existence fade into an illusion.
I remember reading in a scientific report that human memory exists because survival demands it. Memory allows our brains to avoid re-learning the same things, conserving the energy we need to survive, evolve, and progress. If our bodies were so “wisely designed,” why are we incapable of eternally remembering the pain of history, instead repeating the same mistakes over and over?
Han Kang’s works remind us of the history we have allowed to fade. Over half a century later, the world today seems poised to repeat it. We assume that distant events are irrelevant to our own stability, that avoiding them means they won’t come to us. We think that by ignoring them, they don’t exist. But that’s not the case: humanity learned no lasting lessons from the First World War, and soon came the Second. Only after the Second World War did a collective reflection bring a few decades of relative stability. But time is stealthily eroding those memories of suffering—once scars heal, the pain is always forgotten.
The reason I began reading the works of Korean author Han Kang wasn’t out of curiosity about the first Asian Nobel laureate in literature, but rather because of a story I read about her refusing a post-award press conference—an act of protest against the ongoing, inhumane war and “massacre” in Gaza. After finishing her book The Vegetarian, I didn’t find an answer to my small question; instead, I encountered the suffocating oppression often present in Korean literature—a depth so profound, so sharp, that I, someone who fancies myself good at reading comprehension, struggled to grasp its meaning. But on the first night I started reading Human Acts—Chinese version is named Do not say goodbye—I suddenly found the answer that had lingered in my mind.
Han Kang’s gripping narrative technique is laid bare in Human Acts. Her details, almost like vivid cinematic shots, project straight from her pen into the reader’s mind, as though I were witnessing the very images in her mind. Though the story begins with a nightmare, and “massacre” is woven into its theme from the outset, the tale unfolds not with oppression but in a way that drags readers headfirst into the protagonist's world. As I continued, I began to understand why the Nobel would go to her.
At the same time, Human Acts also revealed another answer to me: why she would forego the chance to stand in the world’s brightest spotlight for a cause happening so far away in Gaza. This wasn’t posturing, nor pretense, nor empty anguish. How could someone whose work so deeply embeds the dark tragedies inflicted upon her own people ignore the suffering playing out on another distant stage of horror? Just as, having seen my own child gravely injured, I find myself tearing up at even the thought of a young child in pain, so, too, must Han Kang feel her heart wrenched by the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. Writers may wield no weapons, but the pen is their only armament. Though she cannot shield the dying lives in a far-off place, at least she can, with Nobel’s reach, cry out in silent protest on their behalf.
When it comes to “massacre,” the world remembers the Holocaust inflicted upon the Jewish people by the Nazis. Yet few people outside of China remember the massacre in Nanjing, where hundreds of thousands were killed by the Japanese. As a Chinese person, even I scarcely knew that beyond Nanjing, other parts of Asia suffered similar bloody massacres on those same dates. Human Acts opened up memories of all I’d read about the Nanjing Massacre, evoking a profound resonance that left a lasting impact.
Every name etched on a massacre memorial once belonged to a life—a parent, a child, a young person with plans, an elder yearning for their children’s happiness. These are not mere characters or numbers; they were living, breathing souls. In the mouths of protestors outside BlackRock headquarters reciting the names of thousands killed in Gaza, every name recalled a life with a story, no different than ours—a story written one moment at a time, filled with flesh, blood, and spirit. Yet a single bullet, a single bomb, can erase all of them in an instant. I can’t help but ask: in the eyes of those who kill, what does life mean?
Reading Human Acts didn’t move me to tears; it filled me with guilt, a chill like that endured by its protagonist in a blizzard—a coldness and grief for humanity's ease in forgetting history. Without memory, the existence of every life becomes a mirage, and so too will our own existence fade into an illusion.
I remember reading in a scientific report that human memory exists because survival demands it. Memory allows our brains to avoid re-learning the same things, conserving the energy we need to survive, evolve, and progress. If our bodies were so “wisely designed,” why are we incapable of eternally remembering the pain of history, instead repeating the same mistakes over and over?
Han Kang’s works remind us of the history we have allowed to fade. Over half a century later, the world today seems poised to repeat it. We assume that distant events are irrelevant to our own stability, that avoiding them means they won’t come to us. We think that by ignoring them, they don’t exist. But that’s not the case: humanity learned no lasting lessons from the First World War, and soon came the Second. Only after the Second World War did a collective reflection bring a few decades of relative stability. But time is stealthily eroding those memories of suffering—once scars heal, the pain is always forgotten.
The reason I began reading the works of Korean author Han Kang wasn’t out of curiosity about the first Asian Nobel laureate in literature, but rather because of a story I read about her refusing a post-award press conference—an act of protest against the ongoing, inhumane war and “massacre” in Gaza. After finishing her book The Vegetarian, I didn’t find an answer to my small question; instead, I encountered the suffocating oppression often present in Korean literature—a depth so profound, so sharp, that I, someone who fancies myself good at reading comprehension, struggled to grasp its meaning. But on the first night I started reading Human Acts—Chinese version is named Do not say goodbye—I suddenly found the answer that had lingered in my mind.
Han Kang’s gripping narrative technique is laid bare in Human Acts. Her details, almost like vivid cinematic shots, project straight from her pen into the reader’s mind, as though I were witnessing the very images in her mind. Though the story begins with a nightmare, and “massacre” is woven into its theme from the outset, the tale unfolds not with oppression but in a way that drags readers headfirst into the protagonist's world. As I continued, I began to understand why the Nobel would go to her.
At the same time, Human Acts also revealed another answer to me: why she would forego the chance to stand in the world’s brightest spotlight for a cause happening so far away in Gaza. This wasn’t posturing, nor pretense, nor empty anguish. How could someone whose work so deeply embeds the dark tragedies inflicted upon her own people ignore the suffering playing out on another distant stage of horror? Just as, having seen my own child gravely injured, I find myself tearing up at even the thought of a young child in pain, so, too, must Han Kang feel her heart wrenched by the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. Writers may wield no weapons, but the pen is their only armament. Though she cannot shield the dying lives in a far-off place, at least she can, with Nobel’s reach, cry out in silent protest on their behalf.
When it comes to “massacre,” the world remembers the Holocaust inflicted upon the Jewish people by the Nazis. Yet few people outside of China remember the massacre in Nanjing, where hundreds of thousands were killed by the Japanese. As a Chinese person, even I scarcely knew that beyond Nanjing, other parts of Asia suffered similar bloody massacres on those same dates. Human Acts opened up memories of all I’d read about the Nanjing Massacre, evoking a profound resonance that left a lasting impact.
Every name etched on a massacre memorial once belonged to a life—a parent, a child, a young person with plans, an elder yearning for their children’s happiness. These are not mere characters or numbers; they were living, breathing souls. In the mouths of protestors outside BlackRock headquarters reciting the names of thousands killed in Gaza, every name recalled a life with a story, no different than ours—a story written one moment at a time, filled with flesh, blood, and spirit. Yet a single bullet, a single bomb, can erase all of them in an instant. I can’t help but ask: in the eyes of those who kill, what does life mean?
Reading Human Acts didn’t move me to tears; it filled me with guilt, a chill like that endured by its protagonist in a blizzard—a coldness and grief for humanity's ease in forgetting history. Without memory, the existence of every life becomes a mirage, and so too will our own existence fade into an illusion.
I remember reading in a scientific report that human memory exists because survival demands it. Memory allows our brains to avoid re-learning the same things, conserving the energy we need to survive, evolve, and progress. If our bodies were so “wisely designed,” why are we incapable of eternally remembering the pain of history, instead repeating the same mistakes over and over?
Han Kang’s works remind us of the history we have allowed to fade. Over half a century later, the world today seems poised to repeat it. We assume that distant events are irrelevant to our own stability, that avoiding them means they won’t come to us. We think that by ignoring them, they don’t exist. But that’s not the case: humanity learned no lasting lessons from the First World War, and soon came the Second. Only after the Second World War did a collective reflection bring a few decades of relative stability. But time is stealthily eroding those memories of suffering—once scars heal, the pain is always forgotten.