Weekly Read: “An Infinite Hunger” by Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka
BLR’s Weekly Read brings you one outstanding story, poem, or essay from our archive. This week’s read is “An Infinite Hunger” by Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka, from BLR Issue 44.
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It’s the Tuesday night meeting for your mom’s Catholic charismatic prayer group. Your mom hands you the keys to the front office of the church so you can retrieve the milk crate of supplies from the closet. You have been given the privilege of setting up and breaking down the snack table. No other kid gets to be in the office by themself, not even your brother Mitch, who is in sixth grade, just two years older than you, and gets to do almost anything he wants. Because you’re a girl adopted from Korea, you are used to people saying you’re special, but it’s a feeling you rarely experience.
You get the honor of wandering the halls of the administrative wing at night, but you are also frightened by the darkness. You hurry from light switch to light switch, illuminating the way as if you’re playing the hot lava game and hopping from sofa to chair without touching the floor.
An enormous painting of a crucified Jesus, painted by a church member, hangs on the wall across from the office door. Parishioners pause in front of it each Sunday with their palms pressed together. When you pass it, you avert your eyes, shove the keys in the lock, and hurry into the office to flip on the light, but it doesn’t matter how fast you go or how you look the other way. You’ve stood in front of it so many times you know it by heart…
Why this story?
“Capturing a child’s voice can be tricky; it requires that an entire world be conveyed through a young person’s limited understanding. But when done successfully, the result is heartbreaking. ‘An Infinite Hunger’ tells of a Korean adoptee who, while attending a prayer meeting with her mother, considers the narratives she’s been taught about adoption, race, and abortion.
‘You know you could have starved on the streets of Korea,’ she is told. ‘They tell you this all the time, so you’re grateful that, at least, you had something.’ The story powerfully captures a child’s perspective and a child’s pain, humanizing the abstract debates we often hear.”
– Doris W. Cheng, BLR Associate Fiction Editor
More from Joon Ae
Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka (she/they) is a Korean adoptee. Her work has appeared in The Portland Review, Poets & Writers, Colorado Review, Kartika, Hyphen Magazine, The Plentitudes, and others. She is a Tin House scholar, co-founder of Constellation, a community organizer for racial and economic justice, and an adoptee rights advocate. Learn more about Joon Ae on her website.
Learn more about Constellation, a Portland-based, once-monthly, multi-genre literary reading series.