This was a really poignant collection that touches on generational trauma, war survival, and immigration through the lens of recipes and the existential meanings that food can carry. Really well written and like a filling meal, Some Are Always Hungry is worth ruminating on all the flavors and undertones of each word and phrase.

I have never read a book like this and want to reread it and dissect it. At first, I found it difficult to hook into but once I settled into the poetic form and content I found the narrative rich yet harrowing, real and devastating.

The inclusion of periods and what they signify to a girl growing up stand out as a vivid theme within the story. The betrayal of someone who should care for you, the lies that people are willing to act upon to get their own way.

I am left wanting more

In this collection, the author explores a range of topics. From war to immigration to a lack of food and survival. I thought it was intriguing, I did enjoy a lot of the poems. This is a solid poetry book. For me, there was just something lacking. There were a few poems that I thought were boring and just couldn't connect with.

This poetry collection is utterly jarring, raw and dense even in its brevity. Loss, shame, and rage are made material with disturbing imagery of food and the human body. I had to take breaks after every few poems because of how powerful and heavy they were - I wanted to sit with the weight for a while. Not a book I will soon forget.

When the first blood releases between your thighs, they'll come. You were born knowing to mourn this."

Some Are Always Hungry is a timeless collection of poems. Jihyun Yun's exploration on immigration, food, family, womanhood, survival, war amongst many other things through evocative words is one of the best poetry collections I've read in a long time.

This collection is filling while making you beg for more. I love how unrestrained the poems were and felt to me. They hit the nail on the head, no hanky-panky or shenanigans.

I was honestly impressed by this collection. So impressed. I went in, not knowing what to expect, not having any high hopes and I was blown away. I was blown away so much that it helped me get my writing groove back and I penned down two poems the night I started it.

If you are looking for a collection of poems that will (mostly) make you tick all your boxes in what you are looking for in a poetry collection, read this!

This book follows the life of a family from the perspective of a daughter through war, starvation, and immigration. I am assuming that this story follows a Korean family who had to do everything to survive during the way that leads to the division of Korea. A story told through recipes, tales of fictional characters, discomfort, and shame.
I felt how personal this book was. You cannot express such emotions unless you have gone through it. I enjoyed the way some things and situations were explained. Take for example when she talked about miscarriage her the shame she felt being an unmarried woman, she used the description of a stepmother poking a mouse. Or when she talked about bombings, "the planes dropped their eggs, hatched a red so loud the landscape was struck briefly mute"
"Call us lotus, we bloom in rot" a line from the poem 'For Now, Nothing Burns' has to be my favorite in the whole book.
It is quite a short book, I hope you check it out.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the arc copy of the book for review.
Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun was a collection of poems. The poems were deep and dark. The rawness of emotions were scribbled in every words of the poems.
Well the book was unsettling for me.
Trigger warning.

A heart wrenching collection of poems. This book was filled with beautiful and sad poems, and I found them to all be powerful and great. I really liked reading this book!

What a beautiful, painful, disturbing and stunning collection of poetry. The writing is dense, setting it apart from the plethora of accessible poetry that exists nowadays. There is a time and a place for the Rupi Kaur-style of poetry, but Yun’s writing is literature that you can really sink your teeth into. It is not there to be empathised with, nor does it exist to calm our souls or make me feel heard. It exists to make itself heard, to inform me, not to settle me. It is often completely painful reading, but so utterly important. The writing explores themes of poverty, woman-hood, family, abuse, lack of education, racism, diaspora and the effects of these on the human body, soul and mind.
The language is mouthy and tangible, lyrical - like you can chew on each word. It is beautiful and whole. This feels appropriate given it centres around recipes, food and the home kitchen. This brings the writing into the home, and everything else spills out from this central idea. It’s completely original, again setting it apart from so much other poetry. The feeling of homeliness also provides a stark contrast to the dark and heavy nature of so many of the poems. This works really well, and draws attention to pain at all the right moments and all the right ways. These are important words.

My criticisms are few - sometimes the writing became so dense that it felt impenetrable, like I’d missed the point and meaning, or perhaps that there wasn’t really a point to it in the first place. At times this felt frustrating. At other times, the voice could become confusing and disjointed, like another voice had entered the scene, unexplained. But then in some ways this was refreshing and grabbed my attention in new ways.

I loved this book - I think it’s beautiful and important.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing this e-arc

Idk if it was intentional but i only got to read a third of the actual poems so i cant judge it as a whole therefore will not rate it

Beautiful raw revealing, The poet has a magical way with words.Highly recommend this immersive book of poetry .# netgalley #uofnebraska

Advanced review copy provided by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Wow. I do not often read poetry, but the synopsis of this collection was intriguing and I was completely blown away by the mastery of Jihyun Yun.

Some are always hungry is a collection of poetry that presents themes of womanhood, immigration, family life and the struggle for survival through the lens of food and dinner time. This is unlike anything I have ever read before, and I was blown away by the heartbreaking exploration of trauma and family in the midst of war. I am not well versed in the world of poetry, but I loved this collection and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the themes it explores!

🌙BOOK RECOMMENDATION🌙

Homonyms:
(word with same spelling but different meanings)

태우다· (T’aeuda)
a. To burn or singe by fire
b. To carry, give a ride, pick up.

I burned you. You grew up burning, bundled on my back. Petulant petal, jaundiced thing, plucked from my amniotic rib. I had you suck the milk of dandelions to take the yellow from your skin, sliced antlers rendered to wretched tea to temper your bloodied coughing. I dislodged your limbs in hopes you’d grow to something lithe and desired, the suggestion of a girl. And you did until your girlhood grew dangerous as it does for all girls. I’ve been sorry ever since.

You burned on the coattails of our immigration. Singed your tongue on America until no tongue was rightfully yours, until you came home disgraced having pissed yourself instead of asking to go to the restroom in English. But I wasn’t ashamed. I burned you gently in my arms, burned you all the way home, away from the laughter, burned you against my breast to safety. And daughter, you will not forget these aches you learned. If you have a daughter, you will burn her too.
.
4.5/5⭐
FINALLY read a poetry book after such a long time that made me feel something. Made me see the pain, the honesty, the cruelty of the reality. This is a book with a collection of poems focusing on lives of refugees. The poet is a Korean-American and I believe she have written the pieces from 3 different perspective, herself, her 어머니 (mother) & her 할머니 (grandmother). When it comes to the part of refugee the book is talking about the Japanese and Korean War that was dissolved in 1945. I believe during this time was when the writer's grandmother came to New York as a refugee. And it honestly is such a painful subject that no matter what genre you're reading,if written well, it always leave a mark on you. And this book is VERY WELL written. I just love how the poet used food and animals as metaphors relating it to her or her family's experience. While I did struggled to understand some poems I bet some of them are gonna stay with me for a long time, my personal favourites were Homonyms, I Revisit Myself in 1996, I Revisit Myself in 1996 & The Daughter Transmorphic

Jihyun Yun’s writing is brilliant. I was sucked into the painful rawness of survival from the beginning. Surviving hunger, war, and just being a female.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of Nebraska Press for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Name: Some Are Always Hungry
Writer: Jihyun Yun
Genre: Poetry, War, Violence
Review:
Of wisdom, splendid columns of light
waking sweet foreheads,
I know nothing
but what I’ve glimpsed in my most hopeful of daydreams
of a world without end,
amen
—Li-Young Lee
A collection of heartbreaking poetries that speak about war, immigration and their struggle for survival. The poetess has this silent rage and numbness mixed with her poetries which which explores her life as a girl in immigration to a foreign land. Each poetry talks about different aspects of her life as well as her family's. She explores the struggle of being a immigrant and expresses her connection to her motherland. Through cooking recipes to mythmaking, she dwells into her personal as well as natural history, which gives us a deeper insight to her past.

Absolutely beautiful words, powerful and raw. This poetry that speaks to emotion and experience. Lovely and literary — I recommend Some Are Always Hungry.

"Even newly
out of war, we are afflicted
with spring. A flower grows
through the hinge of a bone,
all stem and snapdragon"

Some Are Always Hungry is a haunting poetry collection about war and girlhood and trauma and immigration, all through the lens of food (or the lack thereof). While I enjoyed the first half of the collection more, the entire thing is as stunning as it is startling.

Some of my favorite poems from this collection include "All Female," "Passage, 1951," "Diptych of a Girl in 1953," "Field Notes from My Grandparents," and "Homonyms."

"At the end of this story,
I walk into the sea
and it chooses
not to drown me."

4.5/5

“If our feast ever happens, if time has not misplaced us, may these girls rise violet from the pot, untangle their legs from perilla and leek and make for the sea with their limbs in their teeth.” Did you ever think about how people ‘abuse’ food like most wouldn’t dare with other people?

Food and humanity, Korean history and survival. Hunger is a raw feeling, it can make the starving treat other people no different from food. They take what they need, ignore what they can’t use, forgetting who they are in the process. War and hardship can bring out the survival mode in anyone. Don’t think you can resist the temptation if it happens to you, few can.

There is always hope though: “Even newly out of war, we are afflicted with spring. A flower grows through the hinge of a bone, all stem and snapdragon.”

Many of the poems are set in Korea. Some Are Always Hungry gives insight into Korean history and food. It also brings up issues that are relevant in other parts of the world: “The skin curls beneath the paring knife’s persuasion, as I think of colonization via inheritance of memory. These words I’ve no reason to know but do.” There could also be a positive reason for that though: travel, as I know the Korean word for carrot as well…

The poems in Some Are Always Hungry have a good flow and read like stories. I’m impressed by how well the layers blend without it feeling forced. Within this poetry collection, you’ll find many beautiful poems that both read like a description of historical events – scenes from someone’s life – and recipes. They show human nature, though mostly the worst of it. Even in these short poems, Jihyun Yun can make the unnamed characters come to life. You feel for them, but you also sympathize with the food. As if the leek I chopped for dinner suddenly grew eyes and brains. Recommended. This collection of poems is a gem (and has such a beautiful cover!).

I struggled a lot with this one. I am always eager for stories from immigrants, it's such a unique perspective and truly singular experience - no two are the same. I crave to read about more stories like that of my father and mother, to see how they translate to other cultures and other mother tongues.

I failed to connect with this one, I didn't feel like there was a clear reasoning for the order of the poems, there was no natural progression of the 'story' for me.

A powerful book about suffering, pain, but also about love. Controversially, when speaking of weakness, these poems evoke a lot of strength and power. Here, the power of the spoken word is offered, freedom from what held it.
Power among women is also recurrent among the painful lines of poignant writing.

“Sun, in this life, I will be your daughter
And you will teach me how to run”