Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

The Hungry Season

A Journey of War, Love, and Survival

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year | Finalist for the 2024 Biographers International Plutarch Award | Longlisted for the 2023 California Book Awards | Shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize | Longlisted for the 2023 Northern California Book Awards

In the tradition of Katherine Boo and Tracy Kidder, The Hungry Season is a “lyrical” narrative with "real suspense" (New York Times): a nonfiction drama that “reads like the best of fiction” (Mark Arax), tracing one woman’s journey from the mist-covered mountains of Laos to the sunbaked flatlands of Fresno, California as she struggles to overcome the wounds inflicted by war and family alike​.
As combat rages across the highlands of Vietnam and Laos, a child is born. Ia Moua enters the world at the bottom of the social order, both because she is part of the Hmong minority and because she is a daughter, not a son. When, at thirteen, she is promised in marriage to a man three times her age, it appears that Ia’s future has been decided for her. But after brutal communist rule upends her life, this intrepid girl resolves to chart her own defiant path.
 
With ceaseless ambition and an indestructible spirit, Ia builds a new existence for herself and, before long, for her children, first in the refugee camps of Thailand and then in the industrial heartland of California’s San Joaquin Valley. At the root of her success is a simple act: growing Hmong rice, just as her ancestors did, and selling it to those who hunger for the Laos of their memories. While the booming business brings her newfound power, it also forces her to face her own past. In order to endure the present, Ia must confront all that she left behind, and somehow find a place in her heart for those who chose to leave her.
 
Meticulously reported over seven years and written with the intimacy of a novel, The Hungry Season is the story of one radiant woman’s quest for survival—and for the nourishment that matters most.
 
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      April 1, 2023

      Doubly disadvantaged from birth as a girl belonging to Laos's Hmong minority, Ia Moua defiantly forged a path of her own after Communist rule came to her country, taking herself and her children first to refugee camps in Thailand and then to California's San Joaquin Valley. Growing rice as her ancestors did proved to be her lifeline, and facing her past proved essential to moving forward. From award-winning writer/photographer Hamilton; compared to Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      August 1, 2023
      A deeply reported story of aspiration and desperation among an immigrant Hmong community in California's Central Valley. Agricultural journalist and photographer Hamilton's protagonist, Ia, was born with the name Ai, meaning small, in 1964, when Laos was descending into civil war. An aid worker decided that "what sounded like 'I' couldn't possibly be a person's name," rendering her name as the Hmong word meaning bitterness. When the Communists seized power in 1975, most of her Hmong community fled to Thailand. The Hmong remained in a refugee camp for years, long enough to experience what Hamilton calls "an additional layer of punishment"--namely, the loss of their self-reliant lives as farmers. Their economy was converted to artisanal craftwork in which the women, now doing needlework, were the breadwinners while the men were barely employed and "no longer essential." Ia, now a mother several times over, took her chances and traveled to America, settling in Fresno in a time when "Americans' sympathy for those displaced by the wars in Southeast Asia grew thinner by the year." While navigating a corrupt system of patronage, Ia did something marvelous: She planted a kind of rice highly prized by Southeast Asian connoisseurs as well as Hmong people, selling it for many times the price of ordinary varieties, and created a small agricultural economy that reached back to the old country. "The rice was a medium for memory," writes the author, "a spiritual bridge on which her heart could walk across all that longing and return to when she was with them both in person." Though it brought money and self-sufficiency, Ia's small--and, given climate change, always endangered--farm could not always lift her from the spiritual malaise of exile, even with her mother's encouraging admonition in the face of hardship: "Next year you can start all over again." A sensitive and carefully written story that sympathetically depicts the hard lives of refugees in a strange land.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from June 1, 2023
      Award-winning journalist Hamilton crafts a radiant work of compelling portraiture in this deep exploration of one woman's lifelong passion for farming despite the most trying of circumstances. From a wartime childhood in Laos to a Thai refugee camp, then immigration to the U.S., Ia Moua exhibits a nearly uncanny ability to survive and thrive. Her dedication to the cultivation of rice, whether in her beloved childhood village or the far less fertile soil of Fresno, California, is evident as she suffers through repeated trials often dictated by Hmong traditions that usually ignore, if not oppose, the ambitions of women. Ia's turbulent relationship with her husband, the trials of her son and his distant fianc�e, the loss of her parents, and the pressures from a far-away brother all fold into a story about the significance and joy Laotian people traditionally find in rice. Hamilton spent hundreds of hours with her subject, and the result is a brilliant narrative that blends an intimate story into the larger cultural, political, and agricultural history of Laos and the Hmong people. Comparisons to Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012) are certainly apt, and book clubs will quickly embrace the stark humanity in this unforgettable title.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

Loading