... a raw chunk of life sliced into essays packed with truths, devastating realizations, music, failed coping mechanisms, a constant search for the self, and a lot of booze ... More than a collection of essays, this book reads like a slightly fragmented memoir focused on the search for identity, the desire to write, and Perry's constant sense of unease as a black man in Iowa City. While music, friends, and his love life all play major roles in the collection, alcohol, racism, the inability to create consistently — and a sense of agitated stagnation — are the elements of cohesion that make this feel like a complete, deep, satisfying read ... Perry's prose is energetic and strange. It effortlessly goes from poetic and self-assured to gloomy and plagued by insecurities to hedonistic and lighthearted ... the writing is a mixture of beautiful and gritty, educated and desperate, brilliant and dark ... The variety of structures, formats, and rhythms Perry uses in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now is extraordinary. Some passages are extremely personal and touching while others turn his experiences into communal events that highlight how change and insecurity are constants that affect all of us ... Perry doesn't shy away from presenting himself and all his flaws ... Perry writes beautifully about ugly events and feelings. He tackles racism head on and explores his role in fighting it ... a rough, heartfelt collection of essays that dig deep into who Perry is and engage the reader in the process with revelations that morph into mirrors that are uncomfortable to look at ... These essays shine with broken humanity and announce the arrival of a new voice in contemporary nonfiction, but they do so with heaps of melancholia and frustration instead of answers. That Perry can hurt us and keep us asking for more is a testament to his talent as a storyteller.
Utilizing prose, film excerpts, and fanciful talk-show interactions, Perry paints a broad-strokes portrait of coming of age as a black artist, searching for identity and belonging in often hostile environments ... The contradictory nature of navigating diaspora is drawn in sharp relief as Perry struggles to balance embracing and challenging expectations and stereotypes ... his blunt observations [are] both refreshing and discomfiting ... While blistering cultural critique is a prominent force within the essays, there are also tender moments ... With his frank, empathetic tone and no-nonsense prose, Andre Perry is a fresh American voice that demands to be heard.
... [a] beautiful, brilliant, bold debut collection of essays ... there is a rare sharpness that is dramatically effective in young writers, especially for a debut collection ... These essays are ballads, images from the self, isolated and marginalized in other countries and in his own land. These are songs of identity and sexuality and expectations the world has of African American males. The only complaint this reader has is that there were not more essays about music, and about life in Hong Kong. Here's hoping this book will mark the start of a long and varied journey for Perry. If the goal of a literary traveler is to show how connected we are to one another, his debut collection is an assured indication of deeper glories yet to come.
...discomforting at times, but careful readers will take time to reflect and perhaps gain new awareness and understanding ... The strong writing, creative genre use, and authentic voice add up to some high-impact essays.
Don’t let these predictable settings fool you: these narratives are vibrant and shirk platitudes. Perry seamlessly weaves throughout his personal stories lush culture criticism and commentary ... Perry also displays a knack for setting ... The title essay is superb ... The collection’s one potential inconsistency is the three brief letters addressed to Emma that conclude the book. It’s not that the writing suffers; it’s as clear and lively here as all that comes before it. However, the switch to an epistle feels a bit forced, even though Perry implements other distinct structures in the earlier selections. Their brevity is also notable given the dense nature of the central essays ... Perry is a master in thinking through the significant minutiae of our interactions. He reminds us how fast we can feel distant from our past and current selves. It’s a remarkable, endless journey toward personal accountability. There’s so much more we can be.
...the essays don’t have time to wait for you. They start mid-moment, making you go along with wherever Perry urgently needs to take you ... Perry’s essays can’t be contained solely in print, but insist upon spilling over the page ... While another notable essay collection released this year, Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, turns the lens outward, briefly touching on the personal, Perry aligns you to his world view, only to expose his universal truths ... Perry’s lived experience and ability to make you look through a wider view is what makes these pieces successful ... Occasionally, there are disjointed moments in the collection, each skillfully used to demonstrate our narrator’s attempts piecing meaning together. Through arguments with racists in dive bars and going home with the wrong lovers, Perry is aptly self-aware to admit his wrongs, making you learn from the missteps ... He won’t give you the answer, but he’ll make you want to keep searching.
Like his book, Perry is not presenting a position. His essays are most satisfying for their largely meandering nature, the abstention from a resolution. Most pieces end on quiet, melancholic notes, without a way out. That feeling of being lost, he says, will hopefully make others feel less alone.
In addition to his creative, thoughtful, and bold writing on race and culture, Perry shares love stories and music stories ... Especially because of the evocative way Perry writes about his past in charged scenes that often buzz with music, fans of Hanif Abdurraqib’s and Jessica Hopper’s recent books will want to take note.
Chronologically arranged to mark the author’s geographical, psychological, and cultural progression, the essays show that he writes engagingly, feels strongly, thinks obsessively about who he is and what he wants, and doesn’t accomplish anything of lasting significance. He writes about a lot that goes nowhere: sex, relationships, bands, writing, and his graduate degree. Yet throughout his journey of self-discovery, he has been gathering material, experiences that he can mine in writing ... At this point, it seems Perry has begun to find his way. A promising first book.
