{"id":584,"date":"2025-06-05T18:31:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T18:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/?p=584"},"modified":"2025-06-05T18:50:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T18:50:15","slug":"the-hunger-we-pass-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/?p=584","title":{"rendered":"The Hunger We Pass Down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From the bestselling author of Superfan<\/em> comes a haunting novel about the demons passed down through five generations of women in a Chinese Canadian family, and what it might take for them to finally break free of the past.<\/strong>

Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-obsessed son, and a secret boyfriend, she can never get everything done in a day. So it\u2019s a relief when Alice wakes up one morning to find the counters are clear, the kids\u2019 rooms are tidy, and orders are neatly packed and labelled. But she doesn\u2019t remember staying up late to take care of things. As the strange pattern continues, she realizes someone\u2014or something<\/em>\u2014has been doing her chores for her. 

Alice knows she should feel uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, who has started to share shocking stories from their family history\u2014beginning with the horrors that befell her great-grandmother, who was imprisoned as a comfort woman in Hong Kong during the Second World War. But the family\u2019s demons\u2014both real and subconscious, old and new\u2014are about to become impossible to ignore.

Set against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down <\/em>is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about how unspoken legacies of violence can shape a family. It follows the relentless spectre of intergenerational trauma as it is handed down from mother to daughter, and asks what it might take to break the cycle\u2014heroism, depravity, or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn The Hunger We Pass Down<\/em>, Jen Sookfong Lee deftly leads readers through an intergenerational story of women and the ways in which they are haunted by societal expectations of femininity, motherhood, daughterhood, and unattainable perfection. You will fall in love with the characters as much as you will be haunted by them. Prepare to be pulled apart.\u201d
\u2014Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Hunger We Pass Down<\/em> is a hauntingly lyrical portrait of grief, trauma, and motherhood. Jen Sookfong Lee\u2019s novel is as terrifying as it is beautiful, and it will linger with readers long after the final page.\u201d
\u2014Monika Kim, bestselling author of The Eyes Are the Best Part<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJen Sookfong Lee summons all the monstrous, ferocious power of the gothic to tell a story you don\u2019t dare look away from. This is the kind of book that eats your sleep.\u201d
\u2014Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love<\/em> and Magic for Beginners<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery woman is a ghost story in Jen Sookfong Lee\u2019s masterful new novel, The Hunger We Pass Down<\/em>. Five generations of Chinese Canadian women wrestle with a legacy of cruelty, violence and degradation that has drawn something voracious and implacable out of the past and into their homes, their bodies, their relationships, and their lives. Laced with delicious dark wit, piercing insight, and unbridled female rage, this terrifying tale will hold you in its tightening grip until the very last word.\u201d
\u2014David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother<\/em>, RED X<\/em>, and The Butcher\u2019s Daughter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Hunger We Pass Down<\/em> chronicles the path of trauma through several generations of women, as it mutates and adapts like a living thing, terrorizing in perpetuity. But as much as it\u2019s a story about the brutal grip of intergenerational trauma, it\u2019s also very much about the bonds forged by this pain. Poignant and biting and haunted by all manner of unsettling spectres, this one really packs a punch.\u201d
\u2014Ainslie Hogarth, author of Motherthing<\/em> and Normal Women<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

McClelland & Stewart<\/a> (Canada), Erewhon Books<\/a> (US), September 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From the bestselling author of Superfan comes a haunting novel about the demons passed down through five generations of women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":591,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}