Description: 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.
Review Quotes: "Winner of the prestigious Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Korean American poet Jihyun Yun's debut offers readers a nuanced yet visceral depiction of food and satiation, one that truthfully exposes violence and greed, and another that exemplifies survival, sustenance, and mercy. Perceptive and moving, Some Are Always Hungry is an inquiry into what sustains humanity through intergenerational injustice."--Eugenie Julienne Mamuyac, International Examiner