This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Christine Wu about her debut collection, Familial Hungers (Brick Books).
About the book:
Bittersweet, numbingly spicy, herbal and milky, Familial Hungers is a lyric feast. Ginger scallion fish, Sichuan peppercorns, ginseng tea, Chinese school and white chefs—the reader’s appetite is satiated with these poems’ complex palate. There are the bubbling expectations for immigrant daughters, the chewy strands of colonial critique, and dissolving crystals of language loss. Wu relentlessly searches the grocery shelves for the hard-to-digest ingredients of identity and belonging, offering us her nourishing honesty and courage pulled from the marrow. You can read a selection of sample poems from the collection here.
This conversation has been edited for time.
About Christine:
Christine Wu is a Chinese-Canadian poet who was born and raised on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver, British Columbia). She has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria, a MLIS from Dalhousie University, and a MA in English from the University of New Brunswick. In 2023, she was the winner of the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award and in 2022, she was shortlisted for the RBC Writers’ Trust Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She now lives and writes in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia) in Mi’kma’ki.
Mentioned in this episode:
University of New Brunswick’s Creative Writing Program
“The Grocery Store Calls Them Cuties” and “Before You Ask,” two poems by Christine Wu, collected in Familial Hungers
Gillian Sze’s poem, “He Asks, Where Are You From?”
Jessica Bebenek, author of No One Knows Us There (Book*hug Press)
Christine Wu recommends:
How to Not Be Afraid of Everything by Jane Wong (Alice James Books)
Peeling Rambutan by Gillian Sze (Gaspereau Press)
Obit by Victoria Chang (Copper Canyon Press)
The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Vintage Books)
There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto (Counterpoint Press)
The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside (New Directions Publishing)
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (Graywolf Press)
Anything and everything by Sharon Olds, especially The Dead and the Living (Knopf)
Lauren Korn recommends:
Familial Hungers by Christine Wu (Brick Books)
Obit (Copper Canyon Press) and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief (Milkweed Editions) by Victoria Chang
Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong (Tin House Books)
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Vintage Books)
The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Vintage Books)
Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants by Ann Hui (Douglas & McIntyre)
Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (Picador, MCD)
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World, Penguin Random House)
No One Knows Us There by Jessica Bebenek (Book*hug Press)
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The Write Question team is Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton, Montana, a literary and community resource for the Bitterroot Valley—providing space to explore, discover, and share passions since 1974. More information can be found at Chapter1Bookstore.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
Funding for The Write Question comes from Humanities Montana; members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
