Well Read

WELL READ By: Luke P. Ihnen

Assistant Federal Defender

MAKING THE PRESENT INHABITABLE: A REVIEW OF THE WORLD KEEPS ENDING AND THE WORLD GOES ON

On August 9, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. The plutonium bomb, which was heavier than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima,1 leveled an area of approximately five square miles. Estimates of death are between 75,000 and 80,000 people. The bombing sparked Japan’s surrender in World War II. It was also the beginning of the end of Japanese colonial rule.

The apocalyptic moment marked the end of the world we knew and the beginning of the world we know. In poet Franny Choi’s new book, The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On, she uses poetry to tell the stories of times in history when a new world emerged from an apocalypse. Choi, who is Korean, traces her lineage to Japanese colonial rule over the Korean peninsula. In her eyes, the bombing meant something completely different to her family than it did to the people of Nagasaki (and maybe the world): the end of suffering from the Japanese empire, and the beginning of their new world.

The collection is difficult to read at times. In the opening poem, borrowing from the book’s title, Choi lays out the premise of her work: Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats: boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses bloom like algae on the shore. . .

the apocalypse began when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. . . .2

In another, titled “Protest Poem” and written during the protests in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, Choi writes: The air’s so thick with fury it shakes the window. Nothing cuts through walls like rage and its promises: No peace. . . . 3

Choi’s collection covers dark themes in both human history and in current events, like slavery, police brutality, the struggle for gay rights, and climate change. Throughout the collection, Choi seeks to center marginalized communities and the various apocalypses and dystopias they have endured.

And yet the collection is also about hope. Hope for what comes after the apocalypse. It it is easy to imagine the world ending but harder to imagine that a world might go on after an apocalypse.4

In Hope in the Dark, a collection of essays by author Rebecca Solnit (whom Choi cites as inspiration for The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On),5 Solnit writes about hope: All that these transformations [of the world] have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope. To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on your future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.6

After reading Choi’s collection, I reflected about the apocalypses in my own life—which pale in comparison to those faced by marginalized communities since the beginning of our history. Nevertheless, I imagine we can all point to similar events in our lives: the loss of loved ones, marital strife, financial insecurity, the loss of a job, an election where our preferred candidate loses, and COVID-19.7

In the moment, these events may seem “un-survivable.”8 But there is something to be said for having enduring hope after the apocalypse. As Solnit writes: “Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. . . To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.”9

We have nothing if we do not have hope.

1 The development of the atomic bomb was part of the “Manhattan Project.” Several Manhattan Project facilities were in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and enriched the uranium used in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. For more information, visit: https://www.nps.gov/mapr/planyourvisit/oak-ridge.htm. 2 Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On, 1–2 (2022). 3 Id. at 123. 4 Franny Choi’s latest poetry finds hope for the future in our past apocalypses (Nat’l Pub. Radio, Morning Edition: Author Interview Nov. 3, 2022). 5 Id. 6 Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, 5 (2d ed. 2016). 7 Perhaps our bar association faces its own apocalypses: coming out of the pandemic; recruiting and retaining diverse lawyers; creating an inclusive and affirming bar. 8 Supra note 4. 9 Solnit, supra note 6 at 5–6.