Professor Adrienne Su presented her newest publication on Oct. 17 at a reading and book signing event on campus. “Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet” is a collection of essays exploring food preparation and eating along with poetry and life experience. Su’s first five poetry books 0have won many awards such as National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and a grant from Money for Women/Barbra Deming Foundation. 

At her book reading, Su herself acknowledged how she believes Dickinson’s community is one of the best. Students attending book readings like this one are given the opportunity to see how the professors and advisors they look to have truly experienced the same academic journey as them. From having fantastic ideas, to discovering how to implement them and working with new people and editors while figuring out peer-review and building relationships in the field, professors like Su are examples of what the future could like for Dickinson students.

The excerpts Su shared truly draw the reader into her work. From learning about her own history as the child of Chinese immigrants who fled the communist revolution, to relating with her experiences with cooking, Su’s work brings out the beauty in every experience. Sharing some of her struggles with wanting to eat ethically while having to eat affordably, Su touches on not just an experience many of us have had, but a greater issue in our society. 

In one excerpt, Su shared that cooking is both “A creative outlet and a relentless requirement.” This means that even when you’re doing something you enjoy, when it is also necessary for survival it can drag you down. Later Su shared that patience is key, explaining how she’s been wanting to publish something like this for decades, but wanted to wait until the right time. 

In this work, Su shares real life experiences that most people have or will have. Including the difficulty of putting together a work that takes patience to form: “Every awful paragraph is a bridge to something.” Remembering this not just for your next paper, but also for your next experience. Every person is living a human existence, and that existence is full of wonder and woe. As a community full of inspiring people like Professor Su, Dickinson is the home to bridges being built and ones yet to come. To find her book you could look online, or support Carlisle’s historic district and stop by the Whistlestop Bookshop.