Reading this slim book of poems, I was reminded of a long ago conversation with a friend who firmly believed that there needed to be a sixth love language. “Food”, she would say. “Food is a love language.” Food, both the love of it and its preparation as an expression of love, is all over these pages. Wu is Canadian-Chinese, the daughter of immigrant parents and that struggle too is all throughout these poems.
Full disclosure, I went to university with Christine. We met through a student program and were in the Creative Writing at the same time. We took several courses together and did some group projects and our paths overlapped for a few years. We also happen to have gone to the same high school in Vancouver, although we never met there. But when she talks about her younger years, it was easy for me to picture the neighbourhoods and atmosphere of East Vancouver at that time. We’ve lost touch over the years but I was delighted to hear she was publishing a book and made sure to pre-order a copy.
The book itself is beautiful – both in its binding and it’s cover. The poems inside are raw in their expression but tightly controlled in their form. Wu experiments with various styles and poetic forms. She’s vulnerable and intimate in what she shares, her relationship with her parents being a theme she comes back to frequently. Food is continually an expression of what they cannot say to each other. As a whole, there is a strong sense of story pulling through the collection, something that made me want to keep reading as Wu revealed more. A sense that a curtain was being pulled aside, something being shared.
Karissa Reads Books 
My parents aren’t big into cooking, either in becoming skilled or doing it, so I mostly remember eating spaghetti with sauce out of a jar when I was growing up. Family holidays are bizarre because my mom doesn’t want to cook anything (she hates it), but she doesn’t want me to cook, either, because she thinks I’m supposed to hate it. I would agree that food is a love language, because if you miss that element, it feels like a gaping hole. If you don’t care about food, it’s really hard to notice the love that someone else is giving you.
I don’t come from a food family either – my family sounds like yours with a lot of ready made meals growing up. But I married in to a food family and sometimes it causes tension and confusion. Because they’re making me food as an expression of love but I was raised to believe that anyone serving you food is only doing so out of obligation and feels stressed out by doing it. So I have had to learn to accept (and give) this form of love. It’s one of those relationship differences that isn’t really talked about but probably should be.
I agree that food can be a love language, and yet, if you’ve read the love language book (I sadly have LOL) almost anything can be a love language. Picking up your partners’ dirty socks in the corner of the bedroom every night could be a love language haha
Cooking for my kids, cooking them healthy meals is definitely a love language for me, even if they don’t always want to accept that love LOL
Hahaha, cooking dinner for my kids every night and convincing them to eat it is a sort of love language. They don’t necessarily feel loved by it but if I didn’t love them I would have given up long ago and just fed them KD every night.