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Tributaries: Christine Wu + Familial Hungers
In Familial Hungers (Brick Books), Christine Wu examines the intersections of food, family, and identity, weaving together personal history and cultural inheritance in a deeply resonant poetry collection. Through vivid imagery and reflective storytelling, the collection captures the complexities of growing up between cultures, confronting generational trauma, and navigating belonging.
Christine shares the poem “Before You Ask” from her book, and the poem that inspired it. Read both, and our interview with Christine, below.
Read “Before You Ask”
from Familial Hungers (Brick Books)
BEFORE YOU ASK
After Gillian Sze’s “He Asks, Where Are You From?”
Every answer sounds like a lie. I’m from Saturday morning congee and after school pizza pockets. I’m from gently warmed milk before bed. From math contests and second-hand clothing. From bone broth simmered long before it hit the influencer market. Baked pork chop rice and milk tea after church. That weekly hour of Chinese school where I read The Baby-Sitters Club under my desk. The Sound of Music reruns every Christmas break. Lashings from my father when I brought home a B+. Long walks to school with my mother, who was afraid to let me cross the street alone, despite—or because of—crossing an ocean on her own.
I am from a majority of minorities, maybe you know it as Hongcouver? From adult-onset lactose-intolerance and the milk I no longer drink. Years of disused Cantonese—unable to read the Chinese menu at Wong’s, phone calls left hanging. Stilted bus shelter conversations with locals who keep trying to locate me. That white therapist who asked if I had a tiger mom, despite the hour I spent explaining our family dynamics. I’m from seven provinces away and unlikely to fahn oohk ghei. A country I’ve never lived, reduced to a single aisle at the grocery store.
An interview with Christine Wu
All Lit Up: Can you tell us a bit about your book and how it came to be? How did you
come to write “Before You Ask” and how is it representative of your collection?
Christine Wu: Familial Hungers is a poetry collection about complicated family relationships, generational trauma, and growing up between cultures, all told through the language of food. I started writing this book when I started cooking dishes that reminded me of home—in my family of origin, even when we don’t (or can’t) speak to one another about the fractures that have built up, we can turn to the language of food for common ground. Food allowed me to feel closer to my family, and I began to see the many connections between food, identity, and my family history.
“Before You Ask” is written after Gillian Sze’s poem, “He Asks, Where Are You From?” The question “Where are you from?” is a common racial microaggression experienced by BIPOC—one I’ve encountered numerous times in my life. This poem addresses the question before it can be asked as a way of getting ahead of the microaggression. It offers up a more nuanced way of seeing identity. It delves into the many influences that have shaped me—everything from Saturday morning congee to reading The Baby-Sitters Club books instead of paying attention in Chinese class. It’s a good example of how the poems in Familial Hungers contain paradoxes and multitudes and how children of immigrants wrestle with their (un)belonging and identity.
ALU: What drew you to poetry?
CW: I am drawn to the way poetry is one of the few places that can hold conflicting ideas or emotions. Making space to explore cognitive dissonance is invaluable in our increasingly polarized world. I use poetry to process complicated feelings and experiences, and I value how poems can provide space to ask questions without needing immediate answers, thereby allowing us to consider the grey areas in life. I love how poetry uses language in new and astonishing ways, in order to get close to describing the indescribable.
ALU: What’s a non-written piece of art (e.g. a song / album, painting, sculpture, or film) that you feel is a “sister city” or companion to your collection?
CW: Ponyo (film) – This Miyazaki film has so many common themes with Familial Hungers! Questions of identity, fractures in familial relationships and, of course, Ponyo’s utter delight when she’s presented with a hot bowl of ramen for the first time.
Christine recommends…
“He Asks, Where Are You From?” from Gillian Sze’s
Peeling Rambutan (Gaspereau Press)
ALU: Why did you choose Gillian Sze’s poem “He Asks, Where Are You From?” from her collection Peeling Rambutan? What do you love most about this particular poem?
CW: This is the poem that inspired my poem “Before You Ask.” Here, Gillian Sze addresses the same microaggression (“Where are you from?”) in her own way, by refusing to answer the question the way the questioner wants it to be answered. She writes, “I am from five seconds ago. I am from a few pages back […] I am hither, thither, whither.” Her approach to language is masterful in this poem, all while making a strong statement on race and identity. This poem refuses the white gaze and stands tall in its defiance.
He Asks, Where Are You From?
A: I am from five seconds ago. I am from a few pages back. I am from this door I just closed and from the street below. Eighty-percent of what I say is from A to Z; the rest is just pictures. But if you want to talk about the beginning, I suppose I am made from scratch. I am from the horse’s mouth. I am from pillar to post. When someone asked me if I were from there, I said: Me, I’m from here. And he called me the daughter of the soil, so I guess, from ground up, I am from mud and earth; I am from lime and loam. I am from time to time and from all sides. From now on, hear me when I say that I was once from hence, from thence, from whence. Now I am hither, thither, whither.
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Christine Wu is a Chinese-Canadian poet who was born and raised on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver, BC). She has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria, a MLIS from Dalhousie University, and a MA in English from the University of New Brunswick. In 2023, she was the winner of the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award and in 2022, she was shortlisted for the RBC Writers’ Trust Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She now lives and writes in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS) in Mi’kma’ki.
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Thanks to Christine for answering our questions, and to Brick Books for the text of “Before You Ask” from Familial Hungers, which is available to order now (and get 15% off with the code TRIBUTARIES until April 30!). Thanks also to Gaspereau Press for the text of “He Asks, Where Are You From?” from Gillian Sze’s Peeling Rambutan.
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