Simone Biles Rising (Netflix)
Yee Siyeon: The Netflix sports docuseries Simone Biles Rising explores the mental hurdles that Simone Biles, hailed as the GOAT of the gymnastics world, faced during the Tokyo Olympics and her journey to overcome them. In the middle of the event, Biles was struck with a case of the “twisties,” where a gymnast suddenly loses the ability to sense their direction in the air and therefore the power to control their movements properly. The world was stunned when Biles decided to withdraw, while Biles herself was plagued with frustration when the twisties struck her at the worst possible time, but the athlete decided she had to give up on the competition for the time being for the sake of her own well-being. Upon returning from Tokyo, she spent three months doing basic flips on a trampoline, learning to trust herself again through repeated practice, and focused on recovering her mental state through weekly therapy sessions and by spending quality time with family and friends. Her decision to bow out of the competition was particularly meaningful in that it sparked a discussion around the importance of mental health in athletics. Former Olympic champion gymnasts like Dominique Dawes and Betty Okino make appearances in the documentary, criticizing the pressure that was exerted on athletes in the 1980s and 1990s and how harmful it was, while also praising Biles for her courage. While Olympic athletes, seen as representatives of their respective nations, previously competed, even when injured, under the dangerous view that they had to push themselves no matter what to become world champions, thanks to Simone Biles, the focus has shifted to prioritizing athletes’ mental and physical health.

Simone Biles opens up about the lengths she went to to mask feeling vulnerable when she had the twisties and how she cried in front of her locker during the Tokyo Olympics. However, like the line from Maya Angelou’s poem “And Still I Rise” tattooed on the gymnast’s collarbone, she overcame trauma and failure to rise again. Likewise, Biles’ journey gives viewers the courage to rise again when life knocks them down. At the end of the most recent episode of the docuseries, she hints at aiming even higher in the 2024 Paris Olympics. In the present day, we know she fared phenomenally in Paris, saying in an interview, “I’m super proud of my performance tonight and the fight that I’ve had for the last three years mentally and physically just to get back competing on a world stage.” The second half of the series, documenting Biles’ continuing journey, is set to be released this fall.

Mater 2-10 (Hwang Sok-yong)
Kim Boksung (Writer): Personally, I like a story where the style is engaging enough that it can have few characters, minimal plot, and take place in one limited setting, and still manage to draw readers in. Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong opens with just such a scenario: an older individual staging a one-man protest atop a tiny factory chimney, occupying its narrow walkway. But as the man writes the names of friends and family lost but not forgotten on bottles to keep him company, the spirits that come to visit him—whether in his mind only or entirely from the beyond—spark memories that spin an incredibly intricate web of people and places spanning several generations.
Calling the novel historical fiction feels like something of a disservice. The book is so rooted in the Korea of the first half of the 20th century that it even includes word-for-word source documents at one point, but it’s also very heavily invested in the struggles of several generations of a fictional family. That author Hwang has crafted a work that could easily make four seasons of a nail-biting Netflix drama while also conveying a crucial message—one that speaks to trauma as it takes different shapes, but never truly disappears, a century ago and still today—is a true testament to the power of the writing.