<b>A raw and stunning poetry collection, which has won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Powerful poems which I'll be thinking about for a long time.</b>

This collection by Jihyun Yun is inter-generational, with most poems focussed on grandmother, mother or daughter, and weaved in with Korean folklore. Some of the poems are set during the Korean War, others are on life in America as an immigrant. Hunger in some poems relates to food (or lack of), while others speak of love or longing for Korean traditions. In many of the poems, the line between food and the female body is blurred to reflect misogyny, consuming of females, or dangers of womanhood. The first poem, <i>All Female</i> is a perfect start to what is at times a harrowing collection, and sets the major themes of food, culture, and womanhood perfectly--why it is usually the female of a species who is cooked and eaten? The language of this poem is visceral, and matches the rhythms of women pulling apart female sea creatures while preparing food. It is clear from this poem just how good this collection will be, and the rest of the book does not disappoint.

<i>Some Are Always Hungry</i> doesn’t tell a linear story as such, but there is a cohesiveness which ties the poems together. Spanning about seventy years--from life before and within a war-torn Korea, through to life as a Korean-American--different forms of hunger, suffering, and cultural identity are explored, often through the lens of food. It is more of a sweeping story which touches on moments from each generation, until the final poem rounds the collection off in a way which is both haunting and satisfying. I read the book in one sitting, but it could equally be enjoyed in smaller chunks. Each poem is powerful enough to stands on its own.

My favourite poems are All Female; For Now, Nothing Burns; Field Notes from My Grandparents; Homonyms; The Daughter Transmorphic; Saga of the Nymph and the Woodcutter; The Tale of Janghwa and Hongryeon; Menstruation Triptych; Savaging; Revisitations; The Leaving Season; and Reversal.

The poems are often heavy in theme, and brutal in their depictions. They cut right to the meat of issues, and there are some difficult subjects: violence, abuse, death, starvation, powerlessness. I cried several times reading this. These subjects are handled well--powerful, blunt yet lyrical. Suffering is balanced by family love, belonging, and heritage, and these shifts are all the more beautiful in context of the darkness.

Aside from the raw lyricism of the collection as a whole, of note are the couple of poems which are in the form of a recipe. These poems in particular speak of respect for elders and heritage, as well as a feeling of loss and displacement in a country not particularly open to other cultures.

Overall, this poetry collection is a great choice for a viewpoint on war and immigration, womanhood, and the importance of food (both culturally and in order to survive). Five stars, but be warned that it is a harrowing read at times, with poems which don't shy away from violence or suffering.

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

Thank you to University of Nebraska Press and NetGalley for providing an Advance Review Copy, which I have reviewed voluntarily and based on my own opinion.

This poetry collection is about the realities of war, immigration, assimilation, and being a woman through it all. There were a few poems that really stuck out to me (I can't remember the titles): one about menstrual cycles, the pressure immigrants have to assimilate then get mocked for it, and one listing all the food that is seen as "gross" by western society but is craved. This is definitely a situation of it's not you, it's me. I did enjoy this collection but it took me until about halfway through to really get into it. A lot of the earlier poems went right over my head. I'm not sure if it was the ebook I got or it's just the way the formatting was but it was hard to tell where one poem was started and ending. This is a collection I want to revisit and really go through slowly.

This book was a delight to read. It was lush, gorgeous, and bound by love. I wanted to read more poems Yun. I want to read everything she's ever written and everything she's going to write. This collection, aside from its beauty and it capsule-like quality, is also a lesson in witnessing and in capturing.

Review: Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun.
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Some Are Always Hungry chronicles a family’s wartime survival, immigration, and heirloom trauma through the lens of food, or the lack thereof.

This collection is certainly unforgettable, in how it uses language and metaphor to deliver imagery that is second to none. 'The Leaving Season' is a great example of how the author uses food and imagery as a way of portraying human emotion as she uses the example of a pig, and though somewhat uncomfortable I was, the use of the imagery was incredible and made you able to understand what the writer was trying to deliver, it leaves you with food for thought.

There there are the moments in this collection that are powerful and leave an impact. Lines in these poems that just leave you left with the story that is being told. In particular, 'Grandmother, Praying' in particular comes to mind, with 'The Leaving season'. It is lines such as “Sun, in this life, I will be your daughter And you will teach me how to run” that just pack a punch and leave you provoked for a long time after you have read it.

An excellent collection of poetry that is clever and thought-provoking, I'm glad I got the opportunity to read it.

(I received an ARC from Netgalley for honest review).

Jihyun Yun is a Korean American poet. Her poetry is not straightforward, yet it has an immediacy and rawness that demands your attention.

The imagery is stark at times, metaphors can be brutal. It pulls no punches and doesn't avoid difficult subjects. Women likened to meat. Violation. The onset of puberty. War and its aftermath. Hunger not just about food. Desperation. Family relationships. Separation and new beginnings.

There is a lot of analogy with food preparation and some poems even give recipes. Some things had to be looked up as I am not familiar with Korean cuisine.

A selection of imagery from the poems:

'a fevered petal hung on the hurt of daybreak'

‘bellies swelled like winter melons split too soon from a vine’

‘Our tongues boiled down to language, broth skimmed of birth fat.’

‘Back then, we weren’t made for tenderness, though swathed in summer we fooled ourselves.’

‘Azalea and baby’s breath drop petals on the nightstand like fly’s eggs.’

‘the slow arc of a dust-bloodied moon illuminating garbage’

Some poems struck me more immediately than others, but all are worth reading. There are many layers and much to consider. As with all poetry, you impose your own interpretation, which may or may not concur with the poet's.

I will be interested to see what direction Jihyun Yun's poetry takes next.

I was sent an advance review copy of this book by the University of Nebraska Press, in return for an honest appraisal.

Today I am #reading: Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun (@jihyun.o.yun). This left me hungry for more. Filled with family, history, discovery and masterful storytelling. Beautiful use of language with hard-hitting truths and stunning imagery.

The cover of this book is beautiful and the premise seems interesting. However, when I started reading it, my experience was different altogether. It's strange and eerie and made me uncomfortable. I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone. It's full of details that are raw and gory that might make one feel sad and cringe at times. The parallels drawn between women and different things are truly worthy of appreciation.

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.”
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. The speaker is the recipient of harm from those who have more societal power, yet she also inflicts harm on powerless creatures. She wrestles with the consumption of her body, as well as the ethics of her own consumption and hunger. This nuanced portrayal of morality gives rise to a second key question: How do people live in the messy aftermath of survival? The poems in this book answer this question with accounts of both submission and cruelty. Some Are Always Hungry resists offering a clean-cut path or reconciliation, but instead realistically hovers in the unsettling space between anguish and peace.

This is an extremely beautiful and visceral exploration of womanhood, food, violence, and immigration and I really enjoyed it. I don't often read a lot of poetry, but Jihyun Yun's words are powerful and dense (in a good way) and it's one I'll definitely read more than once. A very talented poet.

Thank you to University of Nebraska Press and Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you very much for the ARC.

A very beautifully written poetry collection that packs so much in such a short read. A poignant look on immigration, poverty, hope, self-expression and food.

Thank you to #NetGalley for providing a copy of this poetry collection. Looking at the Korean experience through war, occupation, immigration and integration, this multigenerational vision uses food and hunger to bring everything together. The visceral imagery was compelling and I was left hoping that the author might consider, one day, writing a full memoir of their family experience over the last 100 years. Combining poetry and prose poetry, this collection is hard hitting, creative, beautiful, sad, sickening and also, on occasions, made me hungry.

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.