Batmen

 Yejin Suh

COUNTERCLOCK Emerging Writer’s Awards – 2nd Place, Prose

*This story has been removed from the website for reasons personal to the writer.

 

Writer’s Notebook

I think the reason that superheroes and comic books remain such a large part of our society's entertainment and a hallmark of American pop culture is because they provide us a chance to look down at our world from a 'bigger' perspective, one where we have more power than the world around us (when it's usually the other way around). Heroes can be fun and dynamic to us, but they can also potentially bring unbalanced, twisted relationships into play. Writing this really personal story to me, I tried to bring together the two elements I find most fascinating in the superhero world (the humor of it; and the ever-changing bad interpersonal skills) in telling, and trying to ultimately make sense of, a story about my own life. I think it is sometimes startling to find that the most fantastical, far-removed-from-reality stories we love often hold the most truth to them in exploring reality.

 

Judge’s Notes

“Oh, my! I adored the mind of the narrator here, how the piece uses comic books and wild asides that depict a daughter trying to understand her father, her family, and ultimately herself.” – Nick White, 2021 Prose Judge

 
 
 

about the writer

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Yejin Suh is an aspiring writer from New Jersey whose work appears or is forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Half Mystic, and Blue Marble Review. She has been recognized by YoungArts, The New York Times, and UK Poetry Society, among others. She loves speculative fiction and hopes to foster emerging writers' love for it through her publication Wintermute Lit. She is an incoming freshman at Princeton University.