By Justine Trinh
CW: eating disorder
Growing up is hard; growing up Asian American during the time of social media and fatphobia is even harder. Get good grades; be obedient; be thin. Victoria Ying’s graphic novel, Hungry Ghost, shows how much of a struggle it is to juggle all the expectations of growing up Asian American, as well as the consequences of such expectations, such as eating disorders.
Protagonist Valerie Chu wants to be the perfect daughter. Her mother puts so much pressure on her to be high achieving, docile, obedient, and above all, thin. She constantly makes comments about Val’s body and the food she consumes, and this comes into conflict with what Val wants. She wants to hang out with her friends and eat hamburgers, but her mother reminds her that she has already eaten dinner and to watch what she eats. Val cannot enjoy her time with friends without obsessing over what she ate and how much she consumed. Val internalizes her mother’s words (“do not eat, just taste”) and develops an eating disorder to obey her mother’s directives and to balance her own desires. She binges and purges to maintain her thin figure. However, the tragic passing of her father forces her to reassess her priorities even though this puts her at odds with her mother.
Hungry Ghost critiques the idealized female body. Val’s mother polices Val’s meal by telling her to “cut off the fat from the pork belly before [she] eats it.” Even though this is the best part of the meat, her mother uses guilt and shame to prevent her from eating and to keep her thin. In addition to her mother’s actions, Val internalizes the images on social media as she thinks she has to look like the women she sees online. These images conflate the idealized female body as thin, and consequently, thin is equated with healthy and overweight with unhealthy. This dichotomy does not put into consideration other mitigating factors. Val’s thin body is juxtaposed with her best friend’s, Jordan’s, body. To appear thin/healthy, Val engages in unhealthy actions such as binging and purging and denying herself from the foods she wants to eat. Not only is this physically unhealthy, but it is also mentally unhealthy as she obsesses over calories and what she eats. On the other hand, Jordan, who Val’s mother deems as “fat” and “unhealthy,” is happy and confident. She has a healthy appetite and eats without obsessing about her image. This juxtaposition has us reconsider what healthy really looks like.
I enjoyed how relatable Hungry Ghost was. I really felt for Val when her mother tells her “do not eat, just taste,” and I could see her desire to eat her birthday cake. It made me think about my own relationship with food and body image. A couple of years ago, I had gained the freshman fifteen, and my mother had me stand on the scale. As soon as the numbers were finalized, I remember my mom saying, “You are so fat.” I later came to an understanding about my mom’s words and her views on what constitutes being healthy during a visit to my grandparents. At this visit, my uncle said the same exact thing to my mother: “You are so fat.” This is not to excuse the hurt my mother inflicted onto me, but it shows that there is a lineage and history to these words. Val’s aunt shows that this is the case as well when she states, “Your mom loves you. Just like Grandma loves me, too. But sometimes, they can hurt you more than they know.” Similar to my mother, Val’s mother learned her behaviors from her own mother and continues the cycle onto Val.
I wish there was something like Hungry Ghost published when I was growing up that offered an alternative to comparing myself to the women I saw on the Hollywood red carpet. This is one of the first books that I have read that focused on topics like body image and eating disorders within the Asian American community. This is not to say other books do not exist, but it is important to address these issues. The Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University released an article that stated, “Asian American young adults are at an elevated risk for symptoms of disordered eating and body image issues compared with Whites and non-Asian people of color.” Hungry Ghost puts the topic at the forefront to spark both awareness and conversation. I appreciate Ying’s honesty that crafted a narrative that spoke to her own personal experience. In the afterward, Ying writes, “Val is not me, but I was her.” That line alone speaks to how much something like this book is needed.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.