What initially began as an essay took on a life of its own. In October 2023, Professor of English and John P. Collett Chair in Rhetoric Agata Szczeszak-Brewer published “The Hunger Book,” her memoir of growing up in Communist-controlled Poland.
“I thought, ‘I can’t possibly parse out all these issues within 20 pages,’” Szczeszak-Brewer says. “I wrote another essay, and then another, and then I thought, ‘Well, actually, it looks like it’s growing into a book.’”
The major themes of Szczeszak-Brewer’s memoir are addiction, codependency, nourishment, and intergenerational trauma. She said those themes left a great deal of room for her to explore maternal love and the sacrifices people make for each other. Her grandparents hold a special place in the memoir as people who stepped up to care for her and her brother when their mother was unable or unwilling to do so.
“I wrote this memoir knowing that there are millions of people like me, with a parent or another family member struggling with addiction,” she says. “Knowing that my story is not necessarily unique actually helped me continue writing, because I knew there are people out there who would read it and maybe see themselves a little in the book.”
Szczeszak-Brewer came to the United States to earn her M.F.A. and earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina before coming to teach at Wabash. She is the founder and chair of Immigrant Allies, a group that provides translation services, legal aid, and transportation for local immigrants.
What Szczeszak-Brewer didn’t expect the connection her writing created between her and her readers.
“I was surprised at how readily people shared their stories with me,” she says. “I cherish those moments. They come up to me to share they had a family member with that same issue, or that they themselves are pining for love from a family member who isn’t wholly present in their lives.”
One of her proudest moments was first holding the physical copy of her book. It brought back the emotional investment and the time that she had spent writing.
“The fact that I opened the box containing the books in the presence of my children made it even more beautiful and meaningful to me,” says Szczeszak-Brewer. “I decided early on that I would break the cycle of abuse, that their childhood would be very, very different from mine.
“It was a healing moment to hold this book about my past and to think that now it’s an object; it doesn’t just live in my brain or in my heart. It’s an external object that I can hold, touch, open, put away,” she concludes. “The writing itself was retraumatizing, but once the book took its physical form—printed and bound—I was proud, but more relieved.”