The Wet Hex

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.