No Way of Returning Home

“History is ever arriving” in Melanie Hyo-In Han’s latest book, No Way of Returning Home, in which the recorded history of modern Korea, beginning with the Japanese occupation, is rewritten with the cultural ache, “the Korean ethos,” of collective trauma carried by the poet, which reveals history not as a knowledge for what was, but as a longing for what cannot be. Serving as a voice box for the lives muffled by injustice and tragedy, Han’s poems excavate the silences to reveal what all documentary poetry must accept: the vestiges that show no way back to a time before, and the remaining voids that show no way forward. Despite this knowing, Han’s poems vibrate with the intensity of a nation crying out in numbers of resilience and resistance, across time and space, like a chant to bring forth the future: 한

– Whitney Koo, author of ‘Any Gesture’

‘Melanie Hyo-In Han’s poems trace a lyrical history of 20th-century Korea through Japanese colonisation, civil war, and present-day tragedy. Inventive in form and bilingual approach, these poems ask readers to consider the responsibilities of familial remembrance and witness amid cultural genocide and erasure, as well as the fraught ways such scars shape the ethics of travel and appreciation. These are poems that address questions as yet unresolved.’

– Jonathan Chan, author of ‘azalea dialogues and bright sorrow’

‘한효인 / Melanie Hyo-In Han’s, No Way of Returning Home, is a stunning 조각보 of stories, tragedies, injustices, and 한 of the Korean people. Spanning oceans, generations, space, land, and time, 효인 masterfully sews pieces of our fragmented histories together and invites readers into an expansive story of the collective Korean community. Her voice is unwavering. Her poems are a pressure relief valve for our 맺힌 한. With unreserved precision and clarity, she draws a throughline from our 선조s, to our 할머니s and 할아버지s, to our 엄마s and 아빠s, to us, across the mainland, the islands, and the entire diaspora. Her poetry materializes the words our ancestors were not allowed to speak; the words they would have lost their lives over if they had ever dared let the words leave their mouths; and the words that were too painful to speak. Subverting the Korean ethos of 참을성, No Way of Returning Home is a refreshingly honest telling of our country’s complicated history. She writes with the conviction, the whole-body knowing, that we can only heal – as a people, a nation, and a country – through the sharing and witnessing of our truth, our stories.’

– Jieun Ko, author of ‘With Love, Jieun’

Every word, every space, and every fragment is placed with extraordinary care. Each carries an 울림 (ul-lim) that settles deep in the heart. Melanie draws you into the lives behind Korean history until you are standing alongside its voices, inhabiting their grief and defiance, their endurance and hope. At times, it feels as though you are living these moments with them—wanting to weep, to rage, to refuse what history has asked them to bear. No Way of Returning Home doesn’t simply recount history. It invites you to bear witness to it. It leaves you with questions that remain long after the final page: what it means to inherit 한 (han), to remember, and to carry forward the strength of those who came before us.

— Mirae Lee, Co-founder & Editor of choa magazine

With a powerfully succinct and unique voice, No Way of Returning Home is a thoughtfully constructed collection of poems. Melanie captures the pain, rage, and grief that has built up in our bodies over generations. She looks directly at our heartbreak in a profoundly human way and speaks to the resilience that we have necessarily forged and what that has cost. It reminds us that we cannot forget—we can and must continue to fight and find strength and love in what remains.

— Harriet Kim, Co-founder & Editor of choa magazine