Catherine Dang’s debut novel “What Hunger” is a haunting exploration of female rage, generational trauma, and the monstrous appetites that live within us all. Following fourteen-year-old Ronny Nguyen through the suffocating summer before high school, Dang crafts a narrative that is equal parts psychological horror and tender family drama, anchored by prose that cuts like broken glass and bleeds authenticity.
The novel opens with Ronny trapped in suburban ennui, too young for work and too old for cartoons, watching her beloved older brother Tommy prepare for college while she faces the prospect of being left alone with their Vietnamese immigrant parents. But when tragedy strikes and Tommy dies in a car accident, Ronny’s world fractures completely. At her first high school party, a sexual assault by Michael Peterson triggers something primal within her—she bites off part of his earlobe, tasting blood for the first time and awakening an insatiable craving for raw meat.
The Weight of Inherited Hunger
What elevates “What Hunger” beyond typical coming-of-age horror is Catherine Dang’s masterful weaving of family history with Ronny’s transformation. The novel’s most devastating revelation comes through Ronny’s mother Mẹ’s story of survival during the Vietnamese boat people crisis. Stranded on a deserted island with two men, Mẹ was forced to commit cannibalism to survive—first eating her companion who died naturally, then killing her fiancé when she realized he planned to murder her next.
Dang handles this revelation with remarkable sensitivity, never exploiting trauma for shock value. Instead, she demonstrates how survival instincts can be passed down through generations like a genetic inheritance. Mẹ’s confession to Ronny during a predawn car ride is written with quiet power, the horror emerging through understated prose that makes it all the more affecting.
The connection between mother and daughter becomes clear: both are women who have been forced to consume flesh to survive violence perpetrated against them. Mẹ’s cannibalism was literal survival; Ronny’s craving for raw meat represents her body’s attempt to process and reclaim power after sexual assault.
The Complex Landscape of Teenage Girlhood
Dang excels at capturing the particular violence of female adolescence—the way teenage girls can be simultaneously vulnerable and vicious, prey and predator. Ronny’s relationships with her friends Sharon and Hannah feel authentically awkward, marked by the casual cruelty that characterizes high school social dynamics. When they fail to check on her after the party, their explanations ring hollow, highlighting how quickly teenage friendships can reveal their superficial foundations.
The author’s depiction of the assault itself is handled with remarkable restraint. Rather than graphic description, Dang focuses on aftermath—the way trauma manifests in Ronny’s body, her hypervigilance at school, her friends’ uncomfortable questions that reveal their assumptions about what happened. The novel never questions whether Ronny was assaulted; instead, it explores how a young woman might reclaim agency after violence.
Cultural Identity and the Weight of Expectations
One of the novel’s greatest strengths lies in its portrayal of Vietnamese-American family dynamics. Ronny exists in the shadow of her “exceptional” brother Tommy, who represented her parents’ hopes for success in America. With Tommy gone, Ronny faces not only grief but the crushing weight of being the family’s remaining hope while feeling fundamentally inadequate.
Dang captures the specific experience of second-generation immigrants—caught between parents who rarely speak of their homeland except through food, and an American culture that sees them as perpetual outsiders. The family’s meals become windows into Vietnamese culture and memory, but also sites of conflict as Ronny’s new appetite for raw meat horrifies her traditional parents.
The novel’s exploration of Tommy’s secret life—his late-night escapes, his hidden sexuality—adds layers to the family portrait. Dang suggests that all family members carry secrets, and that parents and children often remain mysteries to each other despite living in the same house.
Prose That Captures Both Beauty and Brutality
Dang’s writing style perfectly serves her complex narrative. Her prose can shift seamlessly from lyrical descriptions of suburban summer ennui to visceral depictions of Ronny’s carnivorous episodes. When Ronny finally purchases raw meat from Hardy’s Meat Market and devours it in the woods, Dang writes with a sensuality that is both disturbing and oddly beautiful:
“And my body was warmed by the food in my hands. The heat sat in my belly and burned in my chest, and it crawled down below… It tingled between my legs. A painless pressure, but hard to ignore.”
This connection between consumption and sexuality is handled with remarkable sophistication, never feeling exploitative. Instead, it illustrates how trauma can rewire our relationship with our own bodies and desires.
The Symbolism of Meat and Consumption
Food operates as more than sustenance in Catherine Dang’s “What Hunger” —it becomes a language for discussing power, survival, and cultural memory. The family’s spring rolls and phở tái carry the weight of Vietnamese tradition, while Ronny’s craving for raw beef represents her break from cultural expectations and her embrace of something more primal.
The novel’s most powerful scene may be the family phở dinner where Ronny deliberately eats raw beef in front of her horrified parents and aunt. This act of rebellion is simultaneously cultural transgression and assertion of her new identity. Her parents’ concern about disease and social propriety clashes with Ronny’s newfound understanding that sometimes survival requires consuming what others find unpalatable.
Minor Criticisms and Areas for Growth
While “What Hunger” by Catherine Dang succeeds brilliantly in most areas, there are moments where the symbolism feels slightly heavy-handed. The repeated imagery of highways and car accidents occasionally reads as overly convenient metaphor for family rupture. Additionally, some secondary characters—particularly Ronny’s friends—sometimes feel more like narrative functions than fully realized people.
The novel’s ending, while emotionally satisfying, leaves some questions unanswered about Ronny’s ultimate trajectory. Readers seeking complete resolution may find themselves wanting more exploration of how Ronny integrates her new understanding of herself and her family history.
Literary Connections and Comparisons
“What Hunger” joins a growing canon of novels exploring the intersection of horror and coming-of-age, recalling works like Carmen Maria Machado’s “Her Body and Other Parties” and Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” in its unflinching examination of female experience. However, Dang’s focus on Vietnamese-American identity and intergenerational trauma makes her work distinctive within this landscape.
The novel also connects to the rich tradition of immigrant family narratives, sharing DNA with works like Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Refugees” and Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” though Dang’s incorporation of horror elements creates something entirely new.
Final Verdict: A Powerful Debut That Announces a Major Talent
“What Hunger” by Catherine Dang is that rare debut that feels both urgent and timeless, rooted in specific cultural experience yet universal in its exploration of how trauma echoes across generations. Dang has created a protagonist in Ronny who is neither victim nor monster but something more complex—a young woman learning to survive in a world that has already tried to consume her.
This is not an easy read, nor should it be. Dang refuses to provide simple answers to complex questions about violence, survival, and family. Instead, she offers something more valuable: a nuanced exploration of how we inherit both our parents’ traumas and their strengths, and how sometimes the most radical act of survival is learning to feed ourselves.
Catherine Dang’s “What Hunger” establishes her as a writer to watch, someone capable of exploring the darkest aspects of human experience while maintaining deep empathy for her characters. In an era of sanitized young adult fiction, Dang has written something genuinely transgressive—a novel that trusts its readers to handle complexity and ambiguity.
For readers seeking horror that operates on psychological and cultural levels rather than relying on cheap scares, “What Hunger” by Catherine Dang delivers something far more unsettling: recognition of the monsters we all carry within us, and the terrible logic that sometimes governs their awakening.
Similar Reads for Fans of “What Hunger”
For readers drawn to the horror elements:
- “Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- “The Only Good Indians” by Stephen Graham Jones
- “Ring Shout” by P. Djèlí Clark
For those interested in Vietnamese-American narratives:
- “The Refugees” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong
- “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
And for coming-of-age stories with dark elements:
- “My Education” by Susan Choi
- “Emma in the Night” by Wendy Walker
- “The Girls” by Emma Cline
Catherine Dang’s previous work includes “Nice Girls,” and she is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. “What Hunger” marks her emergence as a distinctive voice in contemporary literary horror.
