Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now

by Andre Perry

With luminous insight and fervent prose, Andre Perry’s debut collection of personal essays, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, travels from Washington DC to Iowa City to Hong Kong in search of both individual and national identity. While displaying tenderness and a disarming honesty, Perry catalogs racial degradations committed on the campuses of elite universities and liberal bastions like San Francisco while coming of age in America.

The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefields of childhood schoolyards and midwestern dive-bars. The impression of Perry’s personal journey is arresting and beguiling, while announcing the author’s arrival as a formidable American voice.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir, Race, Anti Racist

184 pages, Paperback

First published November 12, 2019

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the honesty and unresolved questions in this essay collection. In Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, Andre Perry tackles race, music, love, art, sexuality, and so much more as a black writer living in Iowa City. I most appreciated the unflinching vulnerability in this collection. Perry writes about his experiences of people exotifying/fetishizing him as a black man, how elite spaces, institutions, and people who tout their progressive values often perpetuated microaggressions and overt racism against him and others, and the falling apart of romantic relationships and the coming together of artistic community. He lets us into the messiness of the coping process – his loneliness, uncertainty, his alcohol use and one-time sexual encounters – which made me feel closer to him and admirable of his process.

I wanted more from certain essays, which may just be a me thing. For example, in the first essay of the collection, Perry writes about the n-word and the f-word and the overlaps and distinctions between anti-black racism and homophobia. While I appreciated the feeling of discomfort elicited by seeing the words on the page, I wanted more of a tangible takeaway or reflection pertaining to the overt use of the f-word in particular (though that might be a reaction I have as a gay man). In another essay Perry writes so beautifully and candidly about the dissolution of a romantic relationship he had with a woman named “Miranda,” an essay that reminded me of a crush I once really longed for, lol. Yet by the end of the essay, while I did feel really compelled by the narrative arc overall, I felt confused and wanted more – so what happened with you and Miranda? What insight did you gain about yourself through this experience? What actually made you stay in this relationship even when you at least subconsciously knew it should have ended a while ago?

Who knows, it’s likely that me wanting more speaks to how much I already felt drawn in by Perry’s writing and voice. Recommended for those interested in reading about race, blackness in particular, from an honest and intelligent writer.

[Paris (parisperusing) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When I looked into the ex-soldier’s eyes all I saw were the remnants of a detonation. We bought more drinks for each other and we touched hands to arms, as close and sentimental as we could get with him being a soldier and me being an unknown. … He seemed to vacillate between the perverse desire to control everything and the nihilistic resignation to control nothing at all. I hadn’t been to war but in his eyes I could glean a flickering shadow of my own reflection.”

No book this year has rendered my experience as a black queer man like Andre Perry’s Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now. Jaw-droppingly beautiful, ripe with emotion and told with razor-sharp sincerity, Perry’s essays lanced my heart in half, page after burning page. These essays recollect Perry’s coming of age as roaming artist in the early ‘00s and the racial conflicts he faced across the world, experiences that would become the silhouette of his black identity.

Seeking shelter on the streets of San Francisco to the underbelly of Hong Kong to the belljars of the Midwest, his emphatic yet short-lived triumphs for peace and acceptance in a time and era of such divide felt as familiar to me now as it did back when I was a scared youth stealing kisses with men whose faces are lost to me now. This book burned down, made ash of the stones I once carried in my heart. It made me feel whole and loved and understood in ways that drew me back to earth again.

Dispatching from the shallows of blackness, race, and tremendous desire, the expositions of Perry’s urgent debut collection are ones I hope to live long enough to pass down to my children as a relic of my love.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this essay collection but didn't love it as a whole. There were a couple of essays that I felt didn't go anywhere or didn't go deep enough (ie: Installations -- this particular essay lacked focus imo). With that said, there are three essays that knocked my socks off: American Gray Space, No Country, and Americana/Dying of Thirst. They were powerful, thought-provoking + the highlights of this collection. I wish all of the essays provided me with that kind of effect. It's not a bad collection, I just needed more.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me completely by surprise!
I copied out so many passages, his words will stay with me. Its personal, soulful, vulnerable and just really good. Like sitting down with an old friend you havent seen in a while. I read a lot by female writers so I wasn't sure how I would take to a personal essay collection by a male writer but honestly I loved it. It read like a coming of age memoir in essays. Perry gets very personal as he relays his experiences. Themes of identity, race, and belonging are found throughout. For a debut collection his writing chops are well honed. He's a very intelligent writer, one to keep an eye on in the future. Highly reccomend checking this one out. Available November 12th!
•
Thank You So Much to @twodollarradio
for sending me this #ARC opinions are my own.

[Stacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of the topics Perry mused about (racism, sexuality, identity), but I didn't really like his writing style. Imo, he tended to either ramble or to hyper-focus; the writing felt plodding at times, kind-of like an unedited diary -- a few nuggets but lots of other boring details & digressions that I found uninteresting. I didn't have a huge interest in the music scenes or the party/drinking to excess scenes, both of which were underlying topics running through many of the essays. I can see how some would like it (maybe someone younger than me???), but it just didn't pull me in.

As I was reading, this quote jumped out at me, made me cynically chuckle under my breath as it encapsulated how I felt about reading it: "I felt compelled by duty if not by passion." Yeah, you & me both, dude. You & me both. I wanted to like it, but just... didn't.

Probably 2.5 stars.

[Meredith Long]

I keep thinking about this thing someone said at the stanley art museum before the new exhibit opened. He said “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. He repeated it a few times.

I was reminded of that when reading this. Confronting uncomfortable truths. It’s very vulnerable and thought provoking. It also made me think of Iowa City in new ways because he writes about his time here.

[Devin Redmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think I would have picked this book up on my own. Sometimes essays are hard to read. Hard in the subject matter but also: essays feel like work when I often desire fluff.

But I know this author. Well, wait. Not really. I know who he is. I’ve never talked to him. He is involved in the music and arts and writing scene in Iowa City. What attracts me most about him and this book is that he is behind-the-scenes, and damn, do I ever appreciate this. He isn’t out there touting every single thing he does for Iowa City on social media. And it was pretty much this sole reason as to why I bought and read Andre Perry’s Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now.

Andre talks about racism in his essays. He went to school on the east coast, moved to San Francisco, and then to Iowa City, but always lurking was the n-word, “Being black...someone can always call you a nigger and you know they eventually will. You just don’t know when it’s going to come at you or how it’s going to come....These ‘nigger moments’ - the points in time when black people are forced to recall their blackness in a way that brings shame to their existence - engender self-hate over time.”

Perry writes about his experiences with the word in music. How when he found out that Elvis Costello used the word in an argument, Perry’s love for Costello’s music was tainted, but that he still listened to the Rolling Stones even though “they have been roundly sexist, racist, and offensive to practically everyone on Earth.”

Perry writes about rap music and its use of the word. He admits, and Andre never paints himself angelic in the book, “”When I think about Mobb Deep and their Infamous album, and really, any number of rap albums can serve as the control here, my reasonable side tells me that I should be bothered by their loose use of nigger — trap talk and misogyny aside. But it sounds so good.” He does ask something of us, “So where are the white listeners - the ones who roll down the street en route to middle-class jobs in their trucks, shaking the whole block with the bass and rhymes of A$AP Rocky, Rick Ross, and The Game - where are they when it is time to stand in the streets for justice, for the requiems of Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and the ever-expanding roll call of innocent lives consumed by hate? Where are they when they just need to vote for the right person? To have it both ways, for all of us, is a distinct privilege that we should never invoke.”

Andre learned about racism in San Francisco, a city considered to be diverse and liberal, the city where a friend pleaded him to stay upon hearing about a possible move to Iowa where he would be “engulfed in whiteness.” Perry, however, comes to grips with his decision to relocate. He says that San Francisco would always be alright with the Pre-Approved Negro, the city’s Pre-Approved People of Color, Pre-Approved Children of Immigrants and Pre-Approved Homosexuals, “those who knew enough about the rules of the white system to not only navigate it but to tread carefully enough not to disrupt it.” He asks, “What’s worse, the enthusiastic, purposeful racist or the one who thinks they are not even capable of being racist, the one who could never imagine stepping on your sensitive colored toes and is indeed offended when you have suggested they have done so?”

While I have blocked from my mind most of my foibles made in my 20s and 30s, Andre confronts his head on. He writes about drinking and drugs, sex and sexuality, one-night stands, and falling in love. He writes about the pull of big cities and the confines of Iowa, “It was one of the lures of the city, to be someone else or not even worry about who you were: to forget about yourself, to be alone in the company of others with their eyes not even watching or caring about you.”

As Perry writes about being alone in the company of others, he also doesn’t disregard the allure, when it all feels awful, of having a place to go where the love is real.

I write to make sense of what’s swirling around in my head, and I think Andre Perry does the same thing. He is neither preachy nor innocent in this book. He doesn’t give answers. But he does bare his soul; there is no behind-the-scenes here. The book reveals the beautiful ugly candid honesty and truth that is life. I am better for reading and absorbing Perry’s words.

[The Nerd Daily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published on The Nerd Daily | Review by Beth Mowbray

Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, the debut collection of essays from writer Andre Perry, is both the work of literary merit that serious non-fiction readers crave and an easily approachable compilation that will draw in those who typically prefer fiction.

Perry approaches creative nonfiction with fresh eyes and a contemporary perspective. In just a brief 185 pages, he offers 10 interrelated essays which share the common theme of hunger – for knowledge, discovery, experiences – for life, with all of it’s excruciating beauty. Throughout he explores his identity, both personally and within the constructs set by others. The complexity, the sexuality, of relationships with both women and men. How one learns, grows, bends, flexes over time and through experience. How identity can be a mask that is placed on only when required. And how we seek to find inclusion, a group of others like us and, more importantly, who truly understand us.

Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now holds a deep-rooted commentary on the ways that racism continues to exist overtly in daily life as well as how it quietly seeps into even the most unsuspecting situations. Perry provides a sense that being black is almost like waiting for the other shoe to drop – you know it’s coming, that moment when you will be reminded of your race, just not when or how. He speaks to the way that white people, even those – perhaps, especially those – who claim themselves to be “liberal” still exist in a framework of power. Still perpetuate this social structure by expecting those who are “other” to take on specific functions in ways both explicit and unintentional. And he more broadly highlights how all of the “-isms” – racism, sexism, classism, etc. – are so often overlooked, minimised, or ignored.

In a way few writers are able, Perry reflects honestly on his own intimate life experiences through the lens of his travels across the United States and around the world. With astounding transparency and insight he pokes and prods at his own “secrets and scars,” successes and failures. He examines the contradiction of being expected to fit society’s mould yet being judged when you actually do. He shines a light on how words are used as weapons, powerful and penetrating in their ability to cut you down; yet he admits how he has wielded such weapons himself. He even acknowledges the multitude of ways we learn to move through these experiences: dulling the senses with alcohol, numbing ourselves with drugs, but ultimately forging forward in an attempt to leave behind the old identity and breathe life into the new.

There is clearly much meat on the bone in this collection. Perry’s prose is sharp, witty, and precise. The formats, the narrative structures, he selects are unlike that of typical non-fiction essay writers. By making use of emails, letters, screenplay dialogue, imagined interviews, and multiple choice test questions, Perry excites and engages the reader. He takes the personal, his own unique experiences, and relays them in a way that feels universal, profoundly relatable – and therein lies the hook.

[Nick Crowley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andre Perry is a great writer, and our society has no clue how to handle race.

You can’t expect anyone, however thoughtful, however talented a writer, to give you any answers in that regard. In his essays, Perry projects a series of vignettes that illustrate this point. He's a highly educated black man navigating what he calls "the rules of the white system," confronted by what seems to be a constant imposition of awkward, fatiguing (sometimes blatantly racist) tableaux, in which people say or do the wrong thing. Either they don't know any better, or they're racist, or the “right thing” is too intangible, and all we know is that something isn’t right here. Perhaps nothing at all happens, but there's a subtext acknowledged by everyone in the room that there’s something awkward afoot. His encounters with other black men always nod to this lifelong struggle.

Here’s the cool thing though, and maybe the most important thing. Superficially, Perry and I differ in a lot of ways beyond race. He clearly drank a lot through his twenties; I haven’t been drunk since I was probably 21. He ate a lot of cheeseburgers; I am a health-nut and a vegetarian. He pursued art with a veracity that I admire but never attempted. He knows more about music than I know about anything. We’re super different on paper. Still, I walked away from this book feeling like internally we share a lot in common. I don’t know whether it’s my own imagination, or whether it’s a testament to Perry’s deeply revealing psychological examination of himself, or, who knows, maybe it’s just plain true. In any case, I felt I understood his decisions and his confusion and his discomfort. That’s the mark of a great storyteller.

The book provides a glimpse into the underground world of San Francisco in decades past and a brush with the enigmatic vortex of Iowa City, where I spent some time but never found footing. The book inspired me to get out and "do my shit" despite all the unpleasant scenes it paints. The book furthered my respect for this author, who seems to have been pushing toward something momentous since long before this book’s publication. I hope he has more material, because this thing was fantastic. I was nervous that I would have to go through 2019 having read only a single five star book. But Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now makes it two.

(ENDNOTE: This book set my mind abuzz and yielded a book review much too long and personal to be posted here. I want this endnote to convey a shadow of what I've cut from the review. Namely, that this book really made me think about myself, my past, the world, and the world I want to see someday. I will probably read it again because I devoured it much too quickly.)

[BookChampions · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My head is full of confusion as it often is."

This is such a complex essay collection, one that tries to get at what makes an identity in the early part of the 21st century. Most of the essays consider race, particularly being Black in America, but there are other intersections including gender (masculinity), sexuality, and class.

There are as many moments of Perry's failures and befuddlements laid bare as there are his nuggets of wisdom and clarity. I love the mess of all that, that hungry curiosity for understanding in spite of the fact that entropy is a fundamental force of the universe, and arguably, human existence itself.

At the beginning of my 40s myself, I realize my identity is not more ordered but as confused and complex as it has every been. My identity can't be reduced to labels and it is only in those shifting intersections that I will find myself. It's my hunger to know and be comfortable in my skin that gives me the fuel to keep on living.

I was never brought down by the complexities nor the failures of Perry's text, and that chapters about music ("No Country" and "Americana/Dying of Thirst") were especially illuminating to me. In the end, Perry moves not toward simplicity but a satisfaction with the questions within. I lean into the questions as well.

[Cassie (book__gal) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am endlessly fascinated with how people explore their identity. How they interrogate it, discover themselves, and how they define it. Andre Perry’s debut collection of personal essays is just that: a journey into identity, but really, into belonging. Perry anatomizes his own personal truths but also the commonalities and shared experiences of blackness, queerness, and humanity as a whole. The writing is fluid in such a way that it is able to move from the analytical eye to poetic, lyrical prose without hiccup. ⁣⁣⁣
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Racism, music, sexuality, freedom, and the typical American stories we tell about these topics as a society are all explored. Use of creative methods to land impact doesn’t always perform as expected, but with Perry’s structure it certainly did. Diary entries, imagined conversations, multiple-choice questionnaires....Perry employs unique ways of telling stories and expressing sentiment. ⁣⁣⁣
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Many thanks to Two Dollar Radio for gifting me a copy - I’m feeling grateful for my time sitting with Perry’s words swimming in my head and heart.

[cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up based on Devin's review and am SO GLAD that I did. I may come back and add a real review, but for the moment will just say that the essays in the book have a realness that stunned me occasionally, and that kept me reading past my usual bedtime to finish. Unflinching in his self-examination and in the portrayal of the constancy of racism no matter the geography he inhabits, it makes fro an incredibly compelling read.

NPR said, " 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."

One of the pieces that sticks with me is that I picked this up because the author is someone I have met, someone that has crafted musical experiences in my community that I benefit from and enjoy regularly and deeply, and I LOVE reading books that are somehow based or connected to my little town. What I ended up taking away though, was FAR more universal than anything this little town could hold.

[Beth Mowbray · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a few things that are important to know right off the bat. I don’t read a lot of essay collections. This one, though ... this one is going to be knocking around in my head for some time to come. And Two Dollar Radio ... whew! I haven’t picked up a book put out by them this year that was anything less than amazing. Take note!

With that said, Andre Perry takes creative nonfiction to a whole new level in this debut collection. In a brief 185 pages, Perry shares 10 interrelated essays exploring his identity (both personally and within the constructs set by others). He comments on the ways that racism seeps into even the most unsuspecting situations. And he reflects on intimate life experiences, across the country and around the world, with astounding transparency and insight.

Perry’s prose is sharp, witty, precise. The formats he selects are unlike any nonfiction I have experienced. By making use of emails, letters, screenplay dialogue, imagined interviews, and multiple choice test questions, Perry excites and engages the reader.

Many thanks to Two Dollar Radio for gifting me this advance copy. Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now will be released this Tuesday, 11/12/19 and I highly recommend checking it out! Also keep your eyes peeled for a full review to come over at @thenerdaily.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This essay collection was a birthday gift from my husband, and he knows my taste well! It’s also from Two Dollar Radio, and I tend to love nearly everything they publish. This was a great collection, though some essays were hit or miss for me. I think that’s just the way it goes with essay collections. I especially loved the first essay with the Toni Morrison references and Oprah conversation, and the final essays that were letters to Emma. The Hong Kong music scene one was very meh to me. Loved reading his thoughts on Kendrick in Iowa though.

[Jacob Hoefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of Hanif Abdurraquib will absolutely take to this unique spin on memior in essays. Focusing on race and sexuality and how they play with (or against) eachother in America these essays shine brightest when Perry experiments with fictional scenarios based on his experiences. The sequence where we read a transcript of his interview with O is a particularly striking chapter. Deffinitly another worthwhile entry from Two Dollar Radio and their cast of "Midwestern" authors.

[Amanda Dissinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a worthwhile book. Important thoughts and beautiful writing on what it means to be American and a person of color living in the Midwest but constantly feeling rootless. Looking forward to reading more from Andre Perry!

[Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved Perry's raw, honest writing. He seeks less to present a refined worldview, and is much more keen exploring the world around him, and himself as part of that world. There's a tinge of someone who is shedding his youth, perhaps involuntarily. At times, he revels in the search for meaning, connection, and his place in the world, while at other times he spurns the search. There are some sentences that are just so damn fine. And they stick out all the more amid his generally more (delightfully) coarse style.

[mz · Rating 5 out of 5]

sooooo good. deep even in the shallows and thought provoking and so beautifully poignant. never read someone write about race like this before. loved it

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Poor in pocket, rich in mind, he is an idealist and a dreamer."

[Fanna Seman · Rating 4 out of 5]

kind of pretentious writing style but he’s right so

[Sophia Sims · Rating 3 out of 5]

i tried so hard to like this book and liked some of the essays but there were so many essays i didn’t like i couldn’t get behind the book as a whole😪😪

[Brian Johannesen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly insightful and honest essays. This book will make you a better person.

[Linda Bond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so happy that I discovered Andre Perry and his moving essays. His ability to announce even the most egregious events with the beauty of his flowing narrative will stay with me for a long time. I still hear snippets replaying through my mind: “The party is a hum.” “We were cracking like old paint but we weren’t old…” “A Massachusetts girl. Blond hair and a blue gaze.” Oh my, what a delicious treat. Presented in a variety of ways including what appears to be a screen play, these essays will meld with your body, transferring themselves to your heart and mind where they will take up residence for now and for the future. I recommend this book as a true gift of art. Enjoy your own discovery.

I met this book at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, WA

[Miesha Wilson Headen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andre Perry's Some of Us are Very Hungry is one of the most innovative memoirs since Margot Jefferson's Negroland. Perry gives the vantage point of being a highly educated, handsome, black man in the rarefied locales of St. Albans in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and the Iowa MFA program. He lives life like an NBA basketball player in off season.

He drinks a lot and sleeps with women a lot. He travels to China and listens to crap popular music. He contemplates the typical ideas of otherness, but the most interesting parts happen when he acts -- acts like a homosexual, acts like musician, acts like a bored American. He creates a fresh look at double consciousness.

Men who are similarly situated will enjoy this memoir. It's has a subtle humor. I have a client who is a middle aged black man who graduated from Williams, worked for a Senator in Washington DC, and became a high powered attorney. He totally got Andre Perry's book. As a black man with cache, he drinks for free, the women come easy, the work is good, but something is weird about the whole scene that leaves one with a sense of being both inside and outside.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some essays that really spoke to me in this collection, but a couple had a jarring lack of introspection that otherwise tainted a sparkling collection of work.

The first essay that bothered me was the title essay about his partner, Miranda, who is left behind in the US while he accepts a summer abroad program in Hong Kong. While he details how their relationship wasn't meant to last, he wallows in self-pity for his inability to end it. One of the particularly stark and aggravating quotes from this essay was, "We knew she would need me and I didn't want to be needed. But I needed that ride to the airport and I needed someone to pick me up when I returned a month later so I played the whole thing with a straight face." Really? You didn't break up with this girl because she was willing to drive "three and a half hours from Iowa City to O'Hare" for you? Come on -_-
The story ends with a sexual encounter, thus culminating his self-disgust by betraying their relationship. He believes a major contributor to his lost love is his inability to please Miranda in bed. What is especially frustrating is that the narrator implies that sexual encounters cause Miranda physical pain - what if she had been assaulted in the past? I understand for privacy reasons why this could've been discluded, but I felt that this essay had a very egotistical lense without much empathy for Miranda, who is faithfully waiting to drive back to O'Hare to pick him up while he spends the entire month thinking about how he needs to break up with her. It was an essay that I wish he had discluded entirely from this collection.

The second essay that bothered me was about his move from one of his apartments in San Francisco. He describes a scene in which a local bookstore owner grows angry and irate because he and his friends are dumping all of their belongings on the street. Yes, the bookstore owner sounded unreasonably angry and aggressive, and he entirely overreacted. But while the narrator makes it sound like he is giving his belongings away to the city in a valiant show of community, anybody who has lived in the bay area knows that dumping trash and bulky items are a major issue. I honestly agreed with the bookstore owner's general sentiment in that it's BS to put all of your abandoned possessions in a giant heap in the streets, assuming that others will take care of your problems for you.

[Aaron McQuiston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andre Perry’s first collection of essays Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now is an exploration on being out of place. He splits the essays up into three different sections, “Coastland” where he is living in San Francisco, “Heartland” where he is living in Iowa City, and “Heart” where he is living inside himself. There is a great deal of commentary about being a black male in America, where you can never fit in anywhere because of the color of your skin, and if you do start to feel comfortable in a situation, it is only a matter of time before someone comes along to remind you that you should not feel comfortable.

Some of these essays are really interesting even though they ask questions more than answer them. The first essay, “Language and Other Weapons” is probably my favorite, not only because of the questions that it raises, the use of the “N-word” and the “F-word” and how the racial and homophobic slurs are used to separate and degrade people. There are no answers to these questions, but the thing that draws me to this essay more than some of the others is the structure. Perry uses a variety of voices and styles that keeps the reader off center and so that the punches Perry throws land better.

Most of Perry’s motivations in these essays are going to see bands and drinking. For the highlights brought by his essays on race and feeling out of place and how it is never comfortable to be a black man in America, the lows of him going from bar to bar, meeting friends, watching bands, and going to sleep on some ratty couch or bed (sometimes with a girl). Those stories of his life, the moments that lean toward a memoir of a thinly ruddered 20s, are not very interesting. I found myself thinking that I might be too old for some of these stories, that I have enough late night bar stories that I don’t need anyone else’s.

Some of these essays are really interesting, but there is too much time telling about his wild nights and his struggles with relationships (and leaving them). I do not expect him to be profound and have depth at every moment of his life, but I also think that there are so many times when I am trying to find the thread that I feel like all of it, even the important concepts and ideas, feel more like bar musings.

[Maximilian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There he was, sprawled out on the pavement, his mind distant, talking with spirits the rest of us couldn't see. I ran across the street and knelt on one side of the man, searching for vital signs. His body was bulging through his black jeans and black leather jacket. It was as if his insides had popped like wild carnival balloons, the air pushing his bones and muscles against the clastic casing of his skin. I thought he was exploding. He was breathing and he reached out for my hand. I held him gently but firm enough so that he knew I was really there. I scrambled for my cell phone with my other hand and began an urgent dialogue with 9-1-1. The man moaned in cat-like yelps. I considered his face and the strange years that had brought him to this concrete deathbed. He looked like a cowboy or a rebel. Had he been in a motorcycle gang in the '60s? Did he run wild across the hills and highways of Northern California with a bottle of whiskey by his side, a switchblade in his hand, and a cigarette in his mouth? Had he been at Altamont and how had the '80s and '90s displaced him? Was he one of the institutionalized that late-'60s California had helped push onto the streets? What fate had carried him through so many chapters and dropped him in my arms? Around us, traffic slowed to a humble and respectful drone. Cars pulled away from the scene, turning off Church Street to make room for the emergency vehicles. The old man's eyes seem black in my memory. His own head must have been full of memories and questions and perhaps even resolution. It seems to me that at some point, in our own way, we all find ourselves spread out on a busy intersection, broken, and looking up at the sky; holding a stranger's hand.”

[amf · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Andre Perry offers a glimpse into his 20s & 30s through the lens of race and culture. Readers meet Perry in his 20s while he is living in San Fransisco as a struggling writer & band member. He reflects on living in several of the districts around San Fransisco in the early aughts as a creative and as a Black man. Perry becomes Midwest bound to continue his writing at UIowa Writers Workshop program. It is here where he unpacks several experiences of being a Black man in a state that is 90 percent white. He shares the nuances of Iowa City, a liberal oasis in a conservative state, that is still far from progressive when it comes to white folks addressing their own racism. Perry takes the reader along on his many benders, which offer insight into the times and how Perry navigates his internal tensions with becoming a writer and feelings of being an outsider. The writing style is conversational, descriptive, and deeply honest.

While living in IC, Perry's name came up because he has done a lot since his WW shop days. He has revamped a major independent arts venue and has recently been appointed the Director of a major performing arts venue associated with the University. I became curious about Perry's perspective on IC, especially since he decided to stay all these years later. That mystery was not solved, however, his ability to re-energize two performing art centers in this town makes a lot of sense after reading his quips on various music genres and cultural scenes. Perry has excellent, eclectic taste and approaches art culture writing very briefly.

[Jasen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful words of wonder and wandering. Reminded me of some of my youthful longing and loneliness but with experiences unique to Andre though some of the locations we have shared. Heartfelt, earnest, aware, and well paced.

“But time took away my architecture and I turned into a sticky, knowing ooze that slid through the fault lines of an uncertain future,” p.38

“I tried to do it all but still I stood there, sweaty and tired, facing the inevitable truth that moving breaks us, through sheer physical and spiritual exhaustion, and there is little we can do to ease the pain.” P.65

“But the neighborhood couldn’t care about me like that. The city is a machine. We cannot fight it or deny it. We can only react to the strange events it offers.” P.70

“Then she told me her secrets and I was okay with her secrets but she wasn’t. She was tormented by them. And I sat in her bed, staring at her back and then staring at the wall and it was then that I knew we all had secrets and scars that we carried around. Lie an otherworldly flash I suddenly understood that a lover is there to touch those scars and massage them—not to make you forget them but to help heal them. It was an opportunity—and also a burden—that I hadn’t entirely deduced until then.” P.97

“Age has revealed salient truths to us about migration and geography; that perhaps there was no good place to go, that perhaps some places were only less bad than others.” P.160

[Melanie H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coronavirus book review #11 – 4 stars

Sometimes the personal essay can seem so aimless. Truth be told, that’s where I thought this collection was headed after the first essay on Perry’s San Francisco years. But his mastery of the craft brought it all together.

Perry captures that specific moment, that sliver of years when the Bay area transitioned from just another big city into the big moneyed behemoth that nobody, not even those with great jobs, can afford.

As a current Midwesterner and former Californian, myself, his Heartland essays speak to me in a surprising yet natural way. He captures the artists who live hidden away in anonymity and what it means to struggle with identity in a place where finding yourself isn’t exactly a cultural priority. He is an outsider not only because of the color of his skin.

His trip to write about the Hong Kong music scene exposes life as a writer, traveler and music lover that crosses the cultural divide, he has all the makings of a great travel writer.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention his mastery of finding poignant titles. Some Of Us Are Very Hungry Now speaks volumes.

On a related note, Andre Perry heads up the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City. Fingers crossed that when this virus is on the downturn, I may attend one year. Listening to some of the artists who were supposed to perform in April has lifted my spirits and I eagerly await who he taps to participate in its next iteration.