Unwrapping the Unexpected: Why Eurie Dahn’s ‘Snack’ Is the Must-Read Surprise of the Year
I’ve already devoured Relic by Ed Simon and Grave by Allison C. Meier, before picking up one of the latest in the series, Snack by Eurie Dahn (Bloomsbury Academic; February 2026).
Like Dahn, many of my memories are wrapped up in food. Dahn says she picked the topic because snacks are often overlooked and considered inconsequential. Yet for many people, childhood memories surrounding snacks are particularly vivid. She makes no apologies for focusing on her own perspective:
For these reasons, the book is mostly focused on the US and with all the biases, limitations, and interests that mark who I am, some of which are shaped by the fact that I am a middle-class Asian American woman, a child of immigrants, who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. In other words, this book will not resolve the question of the limits and contours of what constitutes a snack.
