Book Talk Event with Lisa Hamilton of The Hungry Season
Fairfax Recreation is pleased to announce our new partnership with The Wayfinder Bookshop
Join local author Lisa M. Hamilton for a discussion of her new book, The Hungry Season: A Journey of War, Love, and Survival (Little, Brown) at the Women’s Club in Fairfax.
Reported over seven years, The Hungry Season is the intimate biography of Fresno farmer Ia Moua. Born in Laos, Moua fled home in the wake of the American-sponsored war, then spent fifteen years in a refugee camp in Thailand before immigrating to the United States. Acclaimed as one of the best nonfiction books of 2023 (Kirkus Reviews), The Hungry Season chronicles how Moua navigated the devastating loss of everything she loved, and at the same time reinvented herself—into someone more powerful than she ever imagined she could be. Author Lisa M. Hamilton will discuss the book and the complex creative process behind it, in conversation with writer and organizer Anna Lappé.
Don’t miss this amazing kickoff event to bring more literary culture to our community.
“I can’t recall any telling of the refugee’s story with so much depth, texture, and heart. Lisa M. Hamilton is a devoted, inspiring listener and The Hungry Season shines with empathy. I loved this book.” —Ted Conover, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing and Cheap Land Colorado
Registration is not required for this free event.
Buy the book
To purchase a copy of the book, visit Wayfinder Bookshop.
About Hungry Season
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year | Longlisted for the 2024 Plutarch Award
In the tradition of Katherine Boo and Tracy Kidder, The Hungry Season is a “lyrical” narrative with “real suspense” (New York Times): a nonfiction drama that “reads like the best of fiction” (Mark Arax), tracing one woman’s journey from the mist-covered mountains of Laos to the sunbaked flatlands of Fresno, California as she struggles to overcome the wounds inflicted by war and family alike.
As combat rages across the highlands of Vietnam and Laos, a child is born. Ia Moua enters the world at the bottom of the social order, both because she is part of the Hmong minority and because she is a daughter, not a son. When, at thirteen, she is promised in marriage to a man three times her age, it appears that Ia’s future has been decided for her. But after brutal communist rule upends her life, this intrepid girl resolves to chart her own defiant path.
With ceaseless ambition and an indestructible spirit, Ia builds a new existence for herself and, before long, for her children, first in the refugee camps of Thailand and then in the industrial heartland of California’s San Joaquin Valley. At the root of her success is a simple act: growing Hmong rice, just as her ancestors did, and selling it to those who hunger for the Laos of their memories. While the booming business brings her newfound power, it also forces her to face her own past. In order to endure the present, Ia must confront all that she left behind, and somehow find a place in her heart for those who chose to leave her.
Meticulously reported over seven years and written with the intimacy of a novel, The Hungry Season is the story of one radiant woman’s quest for survival—and for the nourishment that matters most.
About Lisa Hamilton
Writer and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton has documented agriculture and rural communities around the world. She was a National Fellow with New America, and has received additional fellowships, grants and awards from the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, California Historical Society, Creative Work Fund, James Beard Foundation and others. She is the author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, and her feature articles have appeared in Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Virginia Quarterly Review, and California Sunday. She lives in Northern California.