Passing Notes in Secret

“Melanie Hyo-In Han’s Passing Notes in Secret asks us to consider the limits and possibilities of language. The poet speaks to us through the preservers of the Korean language during the Japanese Occupation, and through the recounting of her own history across countries, cultures, and languages. Han’s search for home reveals a tapestry of multiplicities that shows us how Korean, English, and Swahili can exist simultaneously on the page, against poetic form, and within herself. Through elegance and experimentation, the everyday and the historical, Han sings to us of cultural distance and intimacies, home and homeland, from “the roots entangled/ under my tongue/ the vines between my gums/ the flower hanging/ from my uvula swaying/ back and forth.” This is a beautiful, intricate collection.”

“Passing Notes in Secret is a lyrical and intimate exploration of identity, belonging, and the inheritances of language. Through poetry that blends Korean and English, Melanie Hyo-In Han weaves a transnational poetics that traces the complexities of migration, cultural multiplicity, and longing for home. From Seoul to London, Dar es Salaam to Gloucester, Han’s voice is both tender and resilient, capturing the nuanced experiences of growing up between worlds. With formal inventiveness and emotional depth, these poems are a tribute to the quiet power of language preservation in the face of violence both mundane and extraordinary, and the fragments of self that persist across borders. “i split/ my mouth open/ like ripe fruit” writes Han, and out spills a collection of luminous poems honoring those who carry their homes within themselves – those who “carry memories in/ every precious root.””

“The letterforms of Korean hangeul weave compellingly through Melanie (Hyo-In) Han’s Passing Notes in Secret, “the roots entangled/under my tongue.” In one poem, “The wind whispers 살랑살랑” while in another, Han addresses “ㅜㅐㅌ ㅇnㅌs wㅐㅇ ㅜㅇrㅌ my Kㅇrㅌan ㅜㅇ pㅣㅌcㅌs.” Her shapeshifting poetics disorients but also reorients the reader, viscerally connecting us to the speaker’s sense of dislocation and search for home via people, place, food, and language. These moving poems remind us the search to “find my whole self/no borders” is not only an immigrant experience but a fundamentally human one.”