Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir
by Bich Minh Nguyen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bich Minh NguyenEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-01
ISBN: 0670038326
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Viking Adult
Book Reviews of Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir
Book Review: A book to savor and devour
Summary: 5 Stars
Heard the author on NPR and I'm a fan of the whole food writing genre so I snapped this book right up. I often find that memoirs are either beautifully written or have a great story. But this tale of food, assimilation and growing up Vietnamese-American in a conservative midwestern city, has both. I savored the language and also devoured the story. The dinner scenes and descriptions of food, particularly grandmother Noi's Vietnamese feasts, are mouth-watering; Nguyen can even turn a Hostess cupcake into a treasured delicacy. The family's escape from Vietnam is harrowing and heartbreaking, as they have to leave Bich's mother behind. The "characters," if that's what you call them in memoir, are all memorable, from Bich's patchwork family of fulls, halfs and steps to the pious lily-white girls she tries to befriend at school. My heart went out to Bich as a young girl trying so desperately to fit in, and to her entire family, every one of them an outsider in this "sea of blonde." I had bought this book expecting a food memoir, but was pleasantly surprised that it offers far more. A universal story with many rewards. I look forward to this author's next book.
Summary of Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir
A vivid, funny, and viscerally powerful memoir about childhood, assimilation, food, and growing up in the 1980sAs a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bich Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity. In the pre-PC era Midwest, where the devoutly Christian blond-haired, blue-eyed Jennifers and Tiffanys reign supreme, Nguyen?s barely conscious desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic seeming than her Buddhist grandmother?s traditional specialties?spring rolls, delicate pancakes stuffed with meats, fried shrimp cakes?the campy, preservative-filled ?delicacies? of mainstream America capture her imagination. And in this remarkable book, the glossy branded allure of such American foods as Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to fit in, to become a ?real? American.
Beginning with Nguyen?s family?s harrowing migration from Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha?s Dinner is nostalgic and candid, deeply satisfying and minutely observed, and stands as a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for.
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