A stream of stir-fries, soups and sweets appeared at my door just a few miles away; on my phone, a text: “Have you eaten?”In many Asian American households, love is intermingled with food. Rather than telling us that they love us, our parents feed us, guarding against physical hunger while an emotional one rages. Two memoirs, Fae Myenne Ng’s “Orphan Bachelors” and Jane Wong’s “Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City,” explore the many forms of hunger that come with being Asian in America. Honoring the full depth of both memoirs in a single review is as impossible as celebrating the full richness of Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage in a single month. Ng and Wong are both second-generation Americans with ancestral roots in Toishan, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

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