Hunger By Samantha Chang Summary

In some cases, keeping memories alive through flashbacks and keepsakes means survival. Hunger, a collection of short stories by Samantha Chang, explores images of life for Chinese-American immigrants. One of the later stories, The Unforgetting, looks into themes of assimilation and acculturation through an immigrant family. Ming and Sansan Hwang have come to the eastern Iowa hills in hopes of finding success and happiness in a new place. They quickly learn that in order to integrate themselves into their new surroundings they must forget their past and learn how to navigate 1970’s American society. Ming uses the youth and hope in his son Charles as his motivation. He wants for his son what he wanted when he was at his prime. Similarly, Sansan

is forced to live through her husband, Ming. Her social and physical mobility is limited by her status as a housewife. Her dependence on her husband sustains her assimilated existence. Together, both Sansan and Ming, cling tightly to their past. The whole premise of the short story highlights their internal battle concerning their cultural background. Their attempts to forget their past contradict their great need to hold on to it. The relationships between father and son and husband and wife show readers truly how reliant these characters are on others and the past. The necessary neglect of their family and personal histories leaves a hole in each of them filled by longing thoughts and allowing themselves to live through others and memories.
The level to which Ming uses Charles’s youth for motivation pushes readers to think that he is, in essence, another father living through his child. From the beginning of the story, Ming, in the midst of the transition into American culture, begins to consider the possibilities of his son’s future. In the basement of their house, the Hwangs keep remnants of their past lives stored away. Ming’s old copy of Handbook of Chemistry and Physics becomes a symbol for the once strong personal identity and aspirations he held. “…cracked and stained; its information had grown outdated. Ming had once believed that some day Charles might find it interesting…” (135) Here, the “cracked and stained” handbook represents Ming’s fading hope, specifically, of studying science, but broadly, of being able to pursue his dreams, and return to his Chinese heritage. His desire for Charles to find interest in science allows him to hold onto the possibility of coming back to this aspiration himself. In this case, Charles is just the mirror into which Ming looks to see himself.
Ming’s inspiration for hard work is building a future for his son Charles.

Actually, his intense selflessness brings him to fault. His dedication to his son’s future is noble, yet consuming. “He replaced such useless memories with thoughts of Charles…he had believed…that he could make a new life in America” (139). Ming is eventually pushed to feel a subtle envy for the freedom and youth his son possesses. Ming had to let go of his culture and identity and because of that, Charles does not have learn the hardships of doing the same.

In a scene where teenage Charles locks his room door, Ming’s reaction attests to his dependence on Charles. Tormented by the image of Charles’s locked door, Ming goes on to disable the doorknobs and locks on several of the rooms upstairs.

“The image of the door [had] disturbed him, as if Charles had access to another world inside that [locked] room, as if he might disappear at will, might float from their second-story windows and vanish into the shimmering, yellow Iowa light”

(145).
Here, readers can paint a picture of Charles’s point of view in his relationship with his father.

Charles does not try to satisfy his father’s near obsession with him. Because of his American upbringing, he does not understand what his father is dealing with in terms of loss of culture and identity. Ming is scared. He finally realizes realizes that he and his son are fundamentally different based on how and where they were brought up and their individual experiences. Because Charles has replaced his memories of the past, Ming has trouble recognizing the fact that there is this huge divide between them. If Charles “disappears”, so does, what Ming thinks is, his only true opportunity for success, purpose, and happiness in his new life.

Both Ming and Sansan have to leave pieces of their personal identity to learn the ways of 1970s American society. The difference between the two is that Sansan is left dependent on her husband as her provider in their adopted American culture. She quickly assumes the classic role of the American housewife. She learns English by watching television. She spends her time annotating a Betty Crocker cookbook. Sansan is given the opportunity to build her own, new life in America. Near the end of the story, Sansan’s frustration finally comes to the surface in a conversation with

Ming.
“[This] is what you wanted! It was your idea to get a job here, in the middle of nowhere–your idea!…You are the cause of this! You have ruined me! You have trapped me into this life!…I want to go back…Why did you have to bring me here?” (151)
In their new life, Sansan is forced to live their her husband, through their shared memories of the pleasant past and their Americanized survival. While her husband gets the closest experience assimilating into 1970s Iowa, Sansan is stuck at home. Iowa is still a foreign place that she has yet to learn how to navigate. “Their world lived in them, and they would be the end of it. They had no solace, and no burden, but each other” (153). They remain together because of their need to hold onto the remnants of the past. Her independence only exists within the household. Beyond that, she is reliant on the support of her husband.
The strong connections between the Hwangs are not rooted in family happiness, but in a supreme dependency on one another. Ming has shaped his new life around that of his son’s. Sansan, bound to the household, is forced to look to her husband for a connection to 1970s Iowa. The only exception is Charles himself. “Their world lived in them, and they would be the end of it. They had no solace, and no burden, but each other” (153). The family’s past in China also plays a large role in the family dynamic and how each person sees the other. Assimilation and acculturation have brought Ming and Sansan Hwang to a place of forlorn existence in which they cling to each other and their son for strength.