"A work of gorgeous, enduring prose."
"Impeccable. . . . Delicately specific tales of Chinese immigrant life . . . capturing the universal struggles of the human heart. . . . So luminous is this collection, the result is something like a pearl."
An elegant debut....Chang offers no easy or reassuring resolution to the tortures of the immigrant experience: complex and rueful, her fiction gives voice to internal struggles, withheld catalogues of loss. -- The New York Times Book Review
Moving and thought-provoking.
...[S]he brings a powreful philosophy to the immigrant 'story'... —A. Magazine
The American writer Chang most resembles, believe it or not, is Bernard Malamud...she plunges bravely and eloquently into...all-American depths.
Marvelous....A work of gorgeous, enduring prose. Her characterizations are intelligent and moving, the writing always poised and mature.
Washington Post Book World
The stories in Hunger are like melancholy tunes — you catch your breath and listen.
Moving and thought-provoking.
A wonderfully written debut collection focusing on Chinese immigrants to America and the troubled lives of their children. Chang concentrates on depicting—with considerable insight and originality—the fault lines of assimilation in American society. Her tales nicely capture the sometimes blunt, often painful, and only rarely hopeful negotiations conducted between parents and children, and between immigrants and natives, above this shifting ground. The powerful title novella sounds notes repeated in many of the stories: a long-suppressed family secret slowly corrodes a marriage, hindering the ability of parents to communicate with their children, and slowly, subtly confounding and wounding the children. The wives in many of these pieces, coming from a traditional culture, are deferential to their husbands, a form of submission that ends for many in bitter resentment. The husbands are stern, remote, and tend to die early, having submerged their own sorrows in a lifelong reticence. The American-born daughters of theme unions (sons do not figure in the stories) are uncomfortably caught between two cultures, often angry or resentful, and sometimes rebellious. The rich emotional resonance of these tales is somewhat diminished when Chang departs her American settings for China. This does not, however, much affect the pleasures available from her somber, vivid, deeply original vision of Asian-American life. The debut of a writer possessing a distinctive, fresh imagination and voice.
"Moving and thought-provoking…Chang’s stories open up to readers a world of sadness and regret."
"That Chang is able to evoke so nuanced a reaction is a testament to her unrelenting dramatic vision, her depth and subtlety of insight and her beautiful, merciless prose."
"Chang’s clear, crisp prose makes the everyday world of Chinese immigrants depicted in her short stories and novella one of great intensity."
"In clear, often shining prose she paints the world of Asian-American immigrants…Hunger places Chang firmly among the group of novelists whose writing about lost homelands has received high acclaim: Oscar Hijeulos, Christina Garcia, Amy Tan, Edwige Danticat, Julia Alvarez, and Junot Diaz."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Poignant…Chang is able to sketch quickly complex personalities caught in a ghetto-like emotional condition. [Her] descriptions recall Henry Roth’s or Bernard Malamud’s immigrant families of the turn of the century."
"These radiant, heartbreaking, soul-touching tales form a working definition of all we hunger for. Lan Samantha Chang writes beautifully of the hungers of the heart: of desire, of ambition; of all we might be, and aren’t; of all we most want, and can’t have."
"Lan Samantha Chang writes superbly about the intricacies of exile and especially about women in exile, caught between the present and the past, their husbands and their children. Hunger is a wonderfully accomplished first collection from a writer whose work we will be reading for many years to come."
"This remarkable first book has a deeply tragic sensibility, but it whispers its tragedy, thereby heightening it. Hunger evinces in many ways the quintessential voice of the immigrant, obscured by longings, distance and nostalgia, muted by language itself, yet resolutely insistent: These stories…will not be silenced."
09/01/2022
First published in 1998, Chang's (The Family Chao ) debut collection of short fiction has now been reissued as an audiobook, with expert narration by Eunice Wong. The tales in this collection revolve around characters of Chinese descent moving precariously through a world full of beauty and opposition. Chang's style is solemn, poetic and crisp, capturing the attention of readers with tense plot lines and a balance of description and dialogue. The title novella is told from the perspective of Min, the wife of a talented violinist whose rich inner world is at odds with the harsh standards of both society and her husband. As her two American-born daughters assert their independence in defiance of their father, Min awakens to her own desire for freedom, self-expression, and recognition beyond her role as wife and mother. The other stories in the collection are equally sharp and full of yearning, but the novella is the most memorable. VERDICT Paired with Wong's understated but dramatic performance, this audiobook is an absorbing listen and a key volume for libraries seeking to add representation of Asian American voices to contemporary fiction collections.—Halie Theoharides
Narrator Eunice Wong delivers an emotionally absorbing performance of this poignant novella and five short stories. This fictional compilation explores complexities of the Asian-American experience, including issues such as assimilation and intergenerational trauma. In the titular novella, HUNGER, Wong magnificently renders the heartbreaking tone and presents authentic characterizations. She displays her impressive vocal range and acting skills in voicing a struggling married couple and their children who are nearly destroyed by the father’s unfulfilled musical aspirations. In the remaining stories, Wong continues to engross listeners by evoking humanity and pathos through continued themes of familial loss and yearning for love. A haunting collection beautifully captured by a rich, memorable performance. V.T.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Narrator Eunice Wong delivers an emotionally absorbing performance of this poignant novella and five short stories. This fictional compilation explores complexities of the Asian-American experience, including issues such as assimilation and intergenerational trauma. In the titular novella, HUNGER, Wong magnificently renders the heartbreaking tone and presents authentic characterizations. She displays her impressive vocal range and acting skills in voicing a struggling married couple and their children who are nearly destroyed by the father’s unfulfilled musical aspirations. In the remaining stories, Wong continues to engross listeners by evoking humanity and pathos through continued themes of familial loss and yearning for love. A haunting collection beautifully captured by a rich, memorable performance. V.T.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
