Catherine Chung, On Reading

"For me, reading is a full-bodied hunger that is spiritual as well as emotional and intellectual. In the poem 'The Cleaving,' by Li-Young Lee, there's this amazing line: 'my reading a kind of eating, my eating/ a kind of reading...' that describes what reading does for me as well as anything can. Reading is essential and sustaining: it nourishes me, fills me up and delights me, teaches me, makes me feel everything and think about everything, and connects me to the world. It not only shows me the path, but is often the path itself."


{Catherine Chung is the author of the novel Forgotten Country, and a Granta New Voice. To learn more about her, visit her website at catherinechung.com.}