Hungry Ghost by Victoria Ying

Release date: April 25, 2023
Setting: USA
Genre: Graphic novel
Means of reading: E-book
Trigger Warnings: Fatphobia, Eating Disorder
Character Identities: Chinese-American, woman
Review:

HUNGRY GHOST is a graphic novel told from Valerie Chu’s perspective as she grows up with a mother who at any time possible, reminds her to watch what she eats as she must remain thin to be beautiful (a narrative common among several Asian cultures). This leads to Val developing an eating disorder where she purges in secret after meals she considers to have binge eaten. Watching her best friend Jordan take full pleasure in food and her larger body size leaves Val jealous about Jordan’s confidence, but also comes with a hefty dose of fatphobia. Of course, this all comes to a head with some tragedies and tension thrown in, and the ending very much spoke to recovery being a long, complex journey.

With the pressure to perform well under any circumstances, we get an insight into the extreme measures people can go to, and the damage they are willing to consciously inflict upon their body in order to try and achieve unsustainable beauty standards.

Personally, I loved this story and all of its forms. The visuals have a sketch-like quality to them, with the colouring being entirely greyscale, blue and pink. The simplicity of this often feels like there’s a layer missing, something not quite whole, which adds to the overall theme of the story.

As restrictive eating disorders become advanced, parts of the brain physically shut down to conserve energy. Of stories I’ve read focusing on disordered eating, graphic novels seem to be a beautiful way to go deeper and show us the struggles that can’t quite be put into words for multitudes of reasons.

Victoria Ying gives a list of resources and further books to read on the subject but warns some may be triggering while in recovery.

I’m extremely grateful to have received an ARC from First Second books and have been enjoying other reviews which go further into the racial nuances my perspective lacks.