Catherine Dang’s ‘What Hunger’ explores coming-of-age and cannibalism
Her latest book blends family, folklore, and fear, and the author shares how she brought Vietnamese refugee stories into horror
Words by Andy Crump
Sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic gave folks opportunities to pick up new skills and hobbies—knitting, gardening, home improvement, breadmaking, podcasting, power lifting. Vietnamese American author Catherine Dang didn’t find a fresh pastime while under lockdown, though. She found inspiration instead, from her mother, who one day casually regaled her with a ghoulish tale of Vietnamese refugees, murder most foul, and cannibalism. Dang, seeking a spark for a followup novel to her 2021 debut, Nice Girls, immediately set to work on what would become her sophomore effort, What Hunger, only finding out months after the fact that the story her mother told her had a basis in reality—art imitating life without even knowing it.
What Hunger, published on Aug. 12, is told from the perspective of Ronny Nguyen, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, whose older brother, Tommy, is weeks away from leaving home for college. Ronny feels his absence before he even leaves. When he does depart, it’s under shocking circumstances. The turn of events provokes in Ronny a new primal craving for raw meat, which she can neither explain nor control—an insatiable coming-of-age tribulation cast against a mournful backdrop.
Dang recently spoke with me about the full breadth of the campfire story her mother told her in 2021, the seed of What Hunger, and the many connections the novel makes between its horror foundations and the stresses of family.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Andy Crump: Could I get the background about the story’s genesis?
Catherine Dang: This was back during COVID; I was isolating at home with my parents in Minnesota. My mom and I like to bond where she's cooking, and I was writing recipes down. My mom would talk about random stuff while she was cooking. She’s a very sweet woman. She hates horror, she hates violence, she hates gore. Any of that stuff, she will not touch or talk about. But the way she brought it up, we were talking about the Kardashians, and then she randomly says, “Did I ever tell you the story about the Vietnamese refugee who killed other survivors and ate them?”
I said, “Mom, that’s crazy! Tell me more.” She framed it as an urban legend she'd heard in the refugee camps in the Philippines. It's the same story I put in the book, where this boat of fleeing Vietnamese refugees crash landed on a barren island in the Philippines, and one of the remaining survivors killed the others and ate them to survive. The Filipino Navy picked him up and tried to return him to the Vietnamese communists, and the Vietnamese communists didn’t want him, so they put him in a camp and hoped he would disappear.
I thought this was very sensationalized, but later I did a Google search and found articles from the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times from the 1980s, talking about cannibalism among Vietnamese refugees, except these stories were usually about people stranded on a boat in the middle of the sea—their supplies would run out, and some people would be targeted for sacrifice. There were women killed, men, even a teen, potentially children. It was crazy to hear about these stories and know there was a hint of truth in my mom's urban legend.
AC: How did you feel finding out that truth? Was it a lightning bolt of inspiration or awestruck horror that you felt in the moment?
CD: I didn't do any research right away. I was just inspired. I was struggling writing my second novel. I had a lot of imposter syndrome, and I had no idea what to write next. So I took the urban legend, ran with it, and turned it into this coming-of-age Vietnamese American story. A lot of it was pulled from my imagination. I'm glad I didn't research until later; that might've affected the writing. It’s horror. I don't have to be bound by logic and historical accuracy.
AC: Horror is much more interesting when it comes from that place, as opposed to an academic, didactic one. Once you did the research, did that affect what you’d already written?
CD: I had long finished the manuscript before I sat down to research it, but I was shocked by the stuff I'd found. The book follows a Vietnamese Catholic family. In some of the reports I read, there was one person who was accused of being the ring leader. He was the one who orchestrated the attacks. But they were ostracized in their refugee camp, and other people used him as a scapegoat. He said, “I am a Christian, I did what had to be done, I'm not a monster.” It tied into my book, even though I had no idea that any of it was connected. The character (in the book) who is revealed to have been the cannibal refugee survivor is also a stalwart Catholic. They view themselves as having done nothing wrong. It’s interesting that my fictional and the real-life cannibals were both religious Christians who framed their actions as justified—not morally wrong, not morally right, but in terms of “I had to do what I had to do.”
AC: The ringleader being ostracized is an interesting foil to the theme of belonging. Ronny is looking for connection; in the end, she finds that. Was that the intent? The isolation she feels is so overwhelming that it's hard not to think in those terms.
CD: The way I frame this book is about kids not understanding their immigrant parents, and viewing them as aliens—as in, “I have nothing in common with this person.” A facet of growing up is realizing that your parents are people and coming to terms with the fact that some of the traits you don't like in your parents show up in you, too. But I wasn't trying to frame belonging in the novel. I really like a macabre and kind of sweet ending in horror. I like to flip things on their heads. So I wanted some tenderness and love, and little bits of macabre happiness.
AC: That’s a good place for horror to be in; the genre’s meant to encompass a range of contrasting and often conflicting sensations. Is the omniscience we have as readers a core intention as well? It enhances the entire climax.
CD: Yeah. I think the ending is a happy ending, but it's also eerie and reflective of real life. Some people take secrets with them to the grave. We have parents and siblings and friends who we don't know everything about. At the end of What Hunger, I'm happy the family is happy. What the characters don’t know won't hurt them. That's the horror that we see every day: the fact that we don't know each other's secrets, or don't know another person fully.
I love Ari Aster’s horror films, Hereditary and Midsommar, how the endings are so eerie. Evil has won, but the main characters seem happy. Essentially, things are okay for them. In Midsommar, Florence Pugh’s character has found a family. Yes, it's a cult, but she's happy and that's all we can ask for. That's the energy that I was going for in What Hunger.
AC: Now I’m wondering what your other horror influences are!
CD: So (Aster’s) horror, for me, is emotional and horrific, not in just a “look at these scary, violent things happening” way. The way the family fights in Hereditary, watching it, you're thinking, “Oh my God, this is so brutal.” It’s reflective of the real-life horrors between families. I also grew up reading a lot of Stephen King. I loved Carrie. That was big. This girl is growing up, there's a metaphor for her period and it’s bloody and crazy.
I like watching horror movies, but I am scared of everything. I write about stuff I'm afraid of because it gets the imagination going. I haven't read as much (horror literature) as I should. I tend to write books I wish already existed. Growing up, I wish that there were coming-of-age Vietnamese American war refugee narratives that were scary and horrific. I read whatever I could about the war and the refugees and the diaspora, but I could never find anything related in a horror sense. So I guess I am writing for myself. We're at a point where there are more Vietnamese horror authors out there, so I'm very happy about that.
AC: If the thrust of the book is about learning to see your parents as people, does that mean you’ve been coming to terms with that yourself, and having that moment of existential dread, realizing that you truly are your parents' kid?
CD: I wish I had started off the book with that intention! With What Hunger, the more basic fear was losing a sibling. I have a little sister and we're super close. Your sibling is the longest relationship you're going to have in your entire life. If you guys both live to old age, it's longer than any relationship you've had with your spouse, your own kids, your own parents. I'm terrified of losing my sibling and I wanted to explore that: how would I grieve, how would I move on and deal with it?
In the writing process, there was a lot of unpacking about being the child of Vietnamese refugees and feeling so different from them and feeling like you two are speaking different languages, both literally and emotionally and maybe spiritually. Growing up you start seeing stark moments where you think, “Oh my God, I'm reacting like my mom would,” or, “I'm losing my temper like this person.” It's scary to face, but it makes me feel closer to my parents. I am my father's daughter. I am my mother's child. It humanizes them. You see them more as people. You start to understand that this is why they behaved in certain ways, and maybe I should have given them more grace. I think it is scary to realize that I'm growing up into (my parents). I just also feel acceptance, and I feel closer to them.
Published on September 5, 2025
Words by Andy Crump
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers movies, beer, music, fatherhood, and way too many other subjects for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours: Paste Magazine, Inverse, The New York Times, Hop Culture, Polygon, and Men's Health, plus more. You can follow him on Bluesky and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65 percent craft beer.