A stunning collection of short stories about the intersection of family, culture, and food in the lives in teens, from bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, including Sandhya Menon, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Rin Chupeco.
A shy teenager attempts to express how she really feels through the pastries she makes at her family’s pasteleria. A tourist from Montenegro desperately seeks a magic soup dumpling that can cure his fear of death. An aspiring chef realizes that butter and soul are the key ingredients to win a cooking competition that could win him the money to save his mother’s life.
Welcome to Hungry Hearts Row, where the answers to most of life’s hard questions are kneaded, rolled, baked. Where a typical greeting is, “Have you had anything to eat?” Where magic and food and love are sometimes one in the same.
Told in interconnected short stories, Hungry Hearts explores the many meanings food can take on beyond mere nourishment. It can symbolize love and despair, family and culture, belonging and home.
- Title: Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food and Love
- Author: Sangu Mandanna, Elise Chapman, SSandhya Menon, Rin Chupeco, Adi Alsaid, Caroline Tung Richmond, Jay Coles, Rebecca Roanhorse, Karuna Riazi, Phoebe North, S.K. Ali, Sara Farizan, Anna-Marie McLemore
- Publisher: Simon Pulse
- Publication Date: June 18th, 2019
- Genre: Short Stories, Young Adult, Contemporary
- Targeted Age Range: YA
- Content Warnings: Mentioned death of a parent, mentions of police, grief, mentions of a fatal injury (brain dead), gangs, mentions of a shooting, death (mentioned heart attack), murder, poison, racism, bullying, blood, thoughts of mortality and death, mentions of war, ghosts, mentioned death of a grandparent, injury, Harry Potter references, cancer, mentions of anxiety, mentions of panic attacks, weed, strained relationship with a parent, physical altercation (slap across the face), mentions of alcoholism, mentions of the holocaust, underage drinking, mentions of drunk driving, mentions of car accidents
- Rating: ★★★★☆
Truth be told, I wasn’t a big anthology reader until last year, but after reading That Way Madness Lies (review here) and Fools In Love: Fresh Twists on Romantic Tales (review here) and enjoying both, I was looking forward to adding more anthologies to my 2022 reading list. I received a copy of Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food and Love for Christmas, and was very excited to dive into this collection.
My favorite thing about this anthology is how all of the stories were connected. Depending on the anthology you read, the stories could be connected through a central theme but they don’t actually have anything to do with each other. In Hungry Hearts, the stories all take place in the same location, Hungry Hearts Row and characters/their restaurants appear multiple times throughout the collection.
The community of Hungry Hearts Row was mentioned quite a bit, and having characters appear, even if just briefly mentioned, in multiple stories really helped to create that sense of community. In fact, there’s one character who makes an appearance in every story and I absolutely loved that. With each story I found myself wishing that I could walk down Hungry Hearts Row and visit all of the amazing restaurants I was reading about.
I was so glad to see that there was such a wide range of diversity in the cultures represented throughout the book. For lots of cultures, many of their traditions and beliefs are passed on through their cuisine and how it’s prepared, so I loved how the authors wove that into the stories they were telling. One of the stories that I felt really exemplified this was Gimme Some Sugar by Jay Coles.
“The butter in the soul. It’s an expression from the South. It means, as you’re cookin’, try and feel more in tune with what you’re makin’. If you feel it in your soul, the taste will be amplified”
Hungry Hearts had stories that centered around families with origins in Korea, China, The Philippines, India, and Mexico, just to name a few of the countries and cultures represented. The rich histories of these cultures made the stories in this anthology so captivating.
While there was a lot of cultural diversity in Hungry Hearts, I do feel like it was lacking diversity in other ways. Of the 13 stories, there were only 2 stories that featured couples that were part of the LGBTQ+ community. I never want authors to just throw in diversity for the sake of doing so, and as I mentioned there was a lot of cultural diversity that I loved, but I do wish there had been different types of relationships featured as the majority of the relationships were heteronormative.
While all of the stories were interesting and well written, I did have my favorites – The Grand Ishq Adventure by Sandhya Menon, The Slender One by Caroline Tung Richmond, and Gimme Some Sugar by Jay Coles.
If you’re a fan of heartfelt stories, complex characters, and relationships, as well as stories about some seriously delicious sounding food, then this is the book for you! I definitely recommend having a snack nearby while reading this, because once you start reading about all the delicious dishes you’re going to be very hungry!
Links for Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food and Love: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
