Beautiful, brilliant, bold... Tantamount to a slice from the Americana
songbook. --Christopher John Stephens, PopMatters
With luminous insight and fervent prose, Andre Perry's debut collection
of personal essays, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, travels from
Washington, DC, to Iowa City to Hong Kong in search of both individual
and national identity. While displaying tenderness and a disarming
honesty, Perry catalogs racial degradations committed on the campuses of
elite universities and liberal bastions like San Francisco while coming
of age in America.
The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal
reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined
talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefields of
childhood schoolyards and Midwestern dive-bars. The impression of
Perry's personal journey is arresting and beguiling, while announcing
the author's arrival as a formidable American voice.
A complete, deep, satisfying read... The variety of structures,
formats, and rhythms Perry uses in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now is
extraordinary... These essays shine with broken humanity and announce
the arrival of a new voice in contemporary nonfiction, but they do so
with heaps of melancholia and frustration instead of answers. That Perry
can hurt us and keep us asking for more is a testament to his talent as
a storyteller. --Gabino Iglesias, NPR