Excerpt from What Hunger by Catherine Dang, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

There was laughter. Then M? suddenly stopped.

"Veronica doesn't walk like this normally," she said to the women. M? was both apologetic and embarrassed. "I don't know why my daughter's doing this now."

Before M? could lecture me, I rushed downstairs to the basement. The eyes were gone, the voices quiet. I knew M? wouldn't follow me. The basement was unfinished, but our parents had furnished it with the laundry machines and a secondhand sofa. An uncle was passed out on the sofa, his face bright red.

I circled the basement, preparing myself. Then I dashed back upstairs. I shot straight through the kitchen, past the women.

Outside, the garage doors were open. The air was cloudy with cigarette smoke. A few of the men glanced up as I walked by, but they were focused on Ba, who was talking at the end of a table. Ba had a cigarette in his mouth, burned halfway through. He'd quit smoking years ago, but he made an exception for nh?u. He said he liked to smoke with friends—that was tradition.

An uncle spoke, his voice low and gravelly:

"Hien's son is ugly as sin. He's stupid, too, so that's even sadder," said the uncle. He raised his cigarette at Ba. "I don't know what you did, but you won the lottery. Your boy has the brains and the looks. And he's tall."

"Lucky bastard," added another.

"But it's only the mind that counts," Ba said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. He leaned back in his chair, pleased. "He's smart. That's how he got into the Harvard of Missouri."

"Harvard," someone said, impressed.

"Not Harvard, but a school just as good in this state. That's what the kids told me. Right, Veronica?"

Instantly, the eyes turned to me. I nodded slowly. When Tommy got into his private university, our parents were pleased, but they didn't understand the prestige that came with it. They acted as if he were going to community college. So Tommy compared it to the one school that everyone knew. Only then were our parents impressed.

"Where's Tommy?" I asked.

Without turning, Ba jabbed his thumb toward the driveway. I wandered outside as the conversation started up again.

"It's sad that they don't speak Vietnamese," muttered an uncle.

"They're busy with school," Ba replied. "They only need English in America."

"It paid off, if one's going to Harvard."

"Maybe that's the trick," someone said.

The men chuckled.

I walked past the cars crammed into the driveway. A few others were parked on the street.

Across the road, there was a steep hill of grass. A chain-link fence sat on top of it, separating our neighborhood from the highway. Cars thundered above us. Tommy and I were used to the constant hum.

We were forbidden to go near the fence. Our parents said it was dangerous to stand behind it, only mere feet away from the speeding cars. They made it sound as though a car would smash into us the second we got up there.

But that only tempted us as kids. We snuck up the hill anyway. I think we were let down the first time—there was nothing special about a chain-link fence by the highway.

And then one day, on the drive home from church, we saw a three-car collision. The cars had been smashed together, front to back. There was an ambulance and a police car and a crew of first responders. The collision was on our part of the highway, right next to our house.

"You see that?" asked Ba. "That's why you don't drive like a crazy person. Insurance won't pay for that."

As soon as we got home, Tommy and I ran across the road. We ignored our parents' shouts as we climbed the grassy hill. Then we stood behind the chain-link fence, our fingers looped in the wire.

Tommy and I saw the wreck right in front of us. We saw the bits of metal and glass that sprinkled the road. The flashing blue and red lights. The cars crumpled together like origami paper. And the stretcher that squeaked by. Then Tommy flinched as I grabbed his arm.

Excerpted from What Hunger by Catherine Dang. Copyright © 2025 by Catherine Dang. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.