The poems in Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun have a good flow and read like stories. Get ready to sympathize with (human) food…
Some Are Always Hungry synopsis
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Some Are Always Hungry chronicles a family’s wartime survival, immigration, and heirloom trauma through the lens of food, or the lack thereof. Through the vehicle of recipe, butchery, and dinner table poems, the collection negotiates the myriad ways diasporic communities comfort and name themselves in other nations, as well as the ways cuisine is inextricably linked to occupation, transmission, and survival. Dwelling on the personal as much as the historical, Some Are Always Hungry traces the lineage of the speaker’s place in history and diaspora through mythmaking and cooking, which is to say, conjuring.
Book review
“If our feast ever happens, if time has not misplaced us, may these girls rise violet from the pot, untangle their legs from perilla and leek and make for the sea with their limbs in their teeth.” Did you ever think about how people ‘abuse’ food like most wouldn’t dare with other people?
Food and humanity, Korean history and survival. Hunger is a raw feeling, it can make the starving treat other people no different from food. They take what they need, ignore what they can’t use, forgetting who they are in the process. War and hardship can bring out the survival mode in anyone. Don’t think you can resist the temptation if it happens to you, few can.
There is always hope though: “Even newly out of war, we are afflicted with spring. A flower grows through the hinge of a bone, all stem and snapdragon.”
Many of the poems are set in Korea. Some Are Always Hungry gives insight into Korean history and food. It also brings up issues that are relevant in other parts of the world: “The skin curls beneath the paring knife’s persuasion, as I think of colonization via inheritance of memory. These words I’ve no reason to know but do.” There could also be a positive reason for that though: travel, as I know the Korean word for carrot as well…
The poems in Some Are Always Hungry have a good flow and read like stories. I’m impressed by how well the layers blend without it feeling forced. Within this poetry collection, you’ll find many beautiful poems that both read like a description of historical events – scenes from someone’s life – and recipes. They show human nature, though mostly the worst of it. Even in these short poems, Jihyun Yun can make the unnamed characters come to life. You feel for them, but you also sympathize with the food. As if the leek I chopped for dinner suddenly grew eyes and brains. Recommended. This collection of poems is a gem (and has such a beautiful cover!).
Interested?
Pre-order your copy of Some Are Always Hungry from Amazon (available 1 September 2020).
Many thanks to University of Nebraska Press and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
 food...){kind=link}