What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food and Family

by Sun Yung Shin (Editor)

Overview

Eating is an intimacy bound with language, family, and migration. Travel far and near with fourteen gifted writers from immigrant and refugee families as they share their flavorful, luminous stories.

Food can be a unifier and a healer, bringing people together across generations and cultures. Sharing a meal often leads to sharing stories and deepening our understanding of each other and our respective histories and practices, global and local. Newcomers to the United States bring their own culinary traditions and may re-create food memories at home, introduce new friends and neighbors to their favorite dishes, and explore comforting flavors and experiences of hospitality at local restaurants, community gatherings, and spiritual ceremonies. People coming to Minnesota from all over the globe must adapt to different growing seasons and to the regional selections available at corner stores and farmers markets. All of these experiences yield stories worth sharing around Minnesota cook fires, circles, and tables.

In What We Hunger For, fourteen writers from refugee and immigrant families write about their complicated, poignant, funny, difficult, joyful, and ongoing relationships to food, cooking, and eating. They journey to Algeria, to Thailand, to Uganda to soothe body and mind; connect with generations past and present through rituals and recipes handed down from parent to child; and savor the flavors of home, whether creating familiar dishes in less-familiar places or coming to appreciate ancestral wisdom translated into modern foodways.

Contributors: Valérie Déus, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Roy G. Guzmán, Lina Jamoul, Simi Kang, May Lee-Yang, Ifrah Mansour, Ánh-Hoa Thị Nguyễn, Zarlasht Niaz, Junauda Petrus-Nasah, Kou B. Thao, Michael Torres, Saymoukda D. Vongsay, and Senah Yeboah-Sampong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681341972
Publisher:	Minnesota Historical Society Press
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	425,974
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sun Yung Shin is the editor of the best-selling anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota and author of the children’s book Cooper’s Lesson and three poetry collections, including Unbearable Splendor, winner of a Minnesota Book Award.

Read an Excerpt

Buy 10 Get 1 Free! Open Letter to Bánh Mì Wanna Be’s
By Ánh-Hoa Thị Nguyễn

To Whom It May Concern:
The first time I had a banh mi that was not a bánh mì I was thoroughly flabbergasted. I didn’t even know something like an imitation bánh mì even existed, and it was only when the person I was dating at the time, who is now my spouse despite this lapse in judgement, brought me one as a consolation while I waited for AAA to service my white and rusted 1992 Camry XLE that broke down while we were on our third date.
It was a sticky, summer day in 2010 and we were hanging out in the hippie Seward neighborhood in Minneapolis where he found the “banh mi” at the coop located a block away from where the car was stranded. The car, being so old that the AC didn’t work and was unreliable and temperamental, spontaneously petered out. Instead of getting upset by the inconvenience and the false start of our day together, his chill and thoughtful response was to offer to get us some refreshments while we waited.
After a few minutes he came back with a bag full of goodies and the prospect of making a good impression by bringing me something that reflected my Vietnamese heritage. As I said, it was early on in our courtship, so I didn’t blame him for his trusting suburban nature in regard to Vietnamese food sold from an “American” establishment, but the sandwich he brought me was far from the bánh mì I had eaten and had come to love while living in the multicultural food oasis of the Bay Area.
I was trying to be kind, since his gesture was so sweet, but it took everything in me to not blurt out, “What the fuck is this?” Instead, I said, “Thanks so much, but I don’t think this is a real bánh mì sandwich.” While we waited for the tow truck, I went on to school him on the genuine nature of a bánh mì. “First of all,” I told him, “a bánh mì is not usually refrigerator cold and uses fresh bread that has a thin, crispy crust and a light and airy inside.” The sandwich that he bought was made out of a spongey, hoagie-like bread that had no crunch to it what-so-ever and was wrapped in cellophane.
The second sin of this imitation sandwich wasn’t the mock duck (did I tell you he is vegan?) but the strange flavored and overly oily “mayo” that the bread was drenched in. I think it also had bean sprouts in it or something equally bizarre that doesn’t usually come in a bánh mì sandwich. Because I was starving, and starting to get hangry and hypoglycemic, I took a bite but couldn’t go further. Luckily, he also bought jalapeno flavored potato chips to go with the sandwich, which I have a soft spot for, and I was able to make it through the ordeal without biting his head off.

Table of Contents

Introduction, by 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin
Grandma’s Portal, by Ifrah Mansour
Living with the Dead, by May Lee-Yang
Haitian Kitchen, by Valérie Déus
An Unfortunate Mosaic, by Michael Torres
Buy Ten Get One Free! An Open Letter to Bánh Mì Wannabes, by Ánh-Hoa Thị Nguyễn
The Measurements, by V. V. Ganeshananthan
“These Are the Plates of Our Lives,” by Senah Yeboah-Sampong
Fragments of Food Memories; or, Love Letter to My Dad, by Lina Jamoul
Mov Ntse Dlej, by Kou B. Thao
Beans or Bullets: A Feminist Reading of Baleadas, by Roy G. Guzmán
The Summer of Lao Beef Jerky at Rivoli, by Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay
Taking Langar: Ancestral Blueprints for Mutual Aid and Abolition, by Simi Kang
Home Is Where the Haleem Is, by Zarlasht Niaz
Lake Superior Looks Like the Ocean to Island Girls from Minnesota, by Junauda Petrus-Nasah

Editorial Reviews

What We Hunger For is a gathering of voices from some of America’s most exciting writers on food. Here is an exploration of our relationships to culture, place, and belonging through recipes, memories, and experiences of home. This is an anthology of how we care for ourselves and each other among those who see us as different, foreign, un-American. This book is for everyone who eats.”
Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father, and Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir

From the Publisher