Feast

by Ina Cariño

Overview

Winner of a 2022 Whiting Award in Poetry

Winner of the 2021 Alice James Award 

At times located in the Philippines, at others in the United States, the speaker of these poems is curious about how home can be an alchemy from one to the other. Feast explores the intricacies of intergenerational nourishment beyond trauma, as well as the bonds and community formed when those in diaspora feed each other, both literally and metaphorically. 

The language in these poems is full of musicality—another way in which abundance manifests in the book. Feast feeds its readers by employing lush sonics and imagery unafraid of being Filipino and of being Asian American. 

Feast offers abundance and nourishment through language, and reaches toward a place an immigrant might call home. The poems in this collection—many of which revolve around food and its cultural significance—examine the brown body's relationship with nourishment. Poems delve into what it means to be brown in a white world, and how that encourages (or restricts) growth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948579315
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Pages:	100
Sales rank:	515,509
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ina Cariño is a Filipinx American poet originally from Baguio City, Philippines. They hold an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Ina's poetry appears or is forthcoming in Diode, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, The Paris Review Daily, Waxwing, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fellow and the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, forthcoming from Alice James Books in March 2023. Most recently, Ina was selected as one of the four winners of the 2021 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. In 2019, they founded a reading series, Indigena Collective, centering marginalized creatives in the community.

Editorial Reviews

"Like the poet, I watched some of the grown-ups around me swallow the bitterness of the so-called American Dream, and together, we hungered for something more. Feast reminds us that we can break this cycle of bitterness and transform it into beautiful, imagined futures. To be eaten does not have to be othering; it can be a way of knowing and understanding. Perhaps this is why the poet ends the poem “Bitter Melon” with an invitation to us readers: “taste me. / taste me.”"
—Hilary Sun, Northwest Review

From the Publisher