yuerstruly

Between Tang poetry and Shakespeare, I'm quite unsure how I ended up choosing a poetry anthology when I am decidedly not into free verse. Finishing Jihyun Yun's Some Are Always Hungry solidified that for me. I was quite into the content—it evoked distrubingly visceral images and was in general unsettling. The topics covered—Japanese occupation in Korea, womanhood, the 20th century immigrant experience—are heavy, and I appreciated that the author was willing to explore them. It spoke to me not as content catered to a foreign audience but a raw portrayal of heirloom trauma.

Now, the standout pieces:

"All Female" - "The men watch game shows / as we wreck the girl bodies / for roe, and I don't know why."

"Field Notes from My Grandparents" - "When I fled / without returning you / to earth, you did not resent me. / Please say it, / you did not resent me."

"I Revisit Myself in 1996" - "I live in California / on Washington Street, / so I think I live / in Washingstone State / and dream of California / weather all sun all the time, / except at night when God / throws stars like darts and punctures / the ground sometimes."

"The Daughter Transmorphic" - "In no version / are they not hunting us."

"Yellow Fever" - "When the first blood releases between your thighs, they'll come."

"Menstruation Triptych" - "I bleed like girls are taught to bleed, / pretending I am fine."

"Some Are Always Hungry" - "We pass the last chicken thigh between us"

"Immigration" - "At sixteen, she's still new to this nation that unnames her daily."

"Benediction as Disdained Cuisine" - "Give me all / I avoided so long for your sake."

"Savaging" - "Today I woke not knowing / which country holds me or if those love / motels stringing neon cords outside my window / were those of Oakland or Seoul."

"The Leaving Season" - "What keeps me / so afraid of wounding a man?"

Comments for:

"Homonyms": This is one of those things where I'll always go "??" because I don't really find meaning in a word meaning two things and taking the meaning that's clearly not the one you're meant to use, then going "haha language is soooo complicated for diaspora."

"Recipe: 닭도리탕": I'll be honest, I didn't pay that much attention to the contents of the recipe. What I did grieve about in this was the fact that Grandma could not "discard" Japanese. It's something I've witnessed firsthand. Japanese is weaved into everyday conversation in Taiwan, especially for the elderly. Even now, there are Japanese words that have been identified as "Taiwanese" because before the arrival of the KMT on the island, Japanese was what the people spoke. It didn't matter what ethnicity you were, what job you did—you learned Japanese.

"Blood Type": Partially an "LOL" moment for me. Identifying blood types is the personality test of … a decade ago? Two decades ago? And Koreans still love to talk about blood types, so this seemed about right to me.