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Book: “What Hunger” by Catherine Dang
Publishing Info: Simon & Schuster, August 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher at ALAAC25.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: A haunting coming-of-age tale following the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny Nyugen, as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood, for fans of Jennifer’s Body and Little Fires Everywhere.
It’s the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba.
Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family’s meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.
But when tragedy strikes, Ronny’s world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.
Review: Thank you to Simon and Schuster for giving me an ARC at ALAAC25!
I may not be looking in the right places, and maybe I don’t WANT to be seeking it out, thinking about it, but I haven’t read much cannibalism horror in all the years of doing this blog. I mean, there have been one or two, and it doesn’t really freak me out too badly as a sub-genre, but when I think of cannibalism horror tales I think of extreme horror or visceral horror, two kinds of horror I don’t really read much of. But who would have thought that my most recent cannibalism horror story would also be an exploration of the refugee experience, the barrier between immigrants and their first generation children, and violent misogyny perpetrated against teenage girls? Enter “What Hunger” by Catherine Dang, a book with an INCREDIBLE cover and a hard to ignore hook. Teenage girlhood can be hell, so why not throw in some consumption of human flesh on top of it?
The description of this book alludes to “Jennifer’s Body”, which is KIND OF correct? Ronny is definitely going through a lot and makes for a very sympathetic and easy to connect to protagonist. After she is sexually assaulted at a party (shortly after her older brother Tommy was killed in an accident that left her family in shambles), and after she bit her attacker and mangled his ear, she starts to have cravings and urges for raw meat, with a fixation on human flesh. She’s heard of stories of cannibalism, one even being connected to Vietnamese refugees desperate during a tragic escape attempt after the fall of Saigon, and as she deals with her trauma and grief, her rage translates into an urge and hunger she can’t seem to fight off. In that way it’s very “Jennifer’s Body”, but it stands on its own merits as well, exploring misogyny and sexual violence and revenge with a literal bite. It wasn’t so much scary as it was ‘good for her!’ as I was reading it, though admittedly some of the graphic descriptions of her chomping down on raw meat were gross as hell, but hey, that’s what we’re looking for, right? I do love feminine rage in a story and this one has oodles of it.
But aside from the cannibalism aspects, this is also a very tender tale about women, mothers and daughters, generational trauma, and refugees trying to make it in a new life when things seem incredibly stacked against them. Me and Ba both escaped from Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War, though the road to America and safety was paved with violence, loss, sacrifice, and terrible choices that had to be made. We see how Me and Ba have been compartmentalizing their trauma and putting so much into their children, foisting expectations upon them that feel heavy and impossible, and after Tommy dies their grief is that much more complicated. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the relationship between Ronny and Me is the one that takes the fastest and strongest root, and while they don’t understand each other’s perspectives in some things, when they DO start to try and understand each other it makes for an eerie, but incredibly heartfelt relationship that brought tears to my eyes multiple times.
“What Hunger” is a uniquely emotional horror tale that unnerves the reader and has a lot of rage, but also has a powerful message about familial ties that come under strain. I quite enjoyed it.
Rating 9: Unnerving, filled with feminist rage, and a strong emotional center about mothers and daughters navigating generational trauma, “What Hunger” is a satisfying horror tale with a fair amount of pathos and heart.
Reader’s Advisory:
“What Hunger” is included on the Goodreads lists “She’s A Little Bit Unstable”, and “Horror To Look Forward To in 2025”.
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