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More copies of this ISBN:Stealing Buddha's Dinnerby Bich Minh Nguyen
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A vivid, funny, and viscerally powerful memoir about childhood, assimilation, food, and growing up in the 1980s
As 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 specialtiesspring rolls, delicate pancakes stuffed with meats, fried shrimp cakesthe 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. Review:"Nguyen was just eight months old when her father brought her and her sister out of Vietnam in 1975. The family relocated in Michigan, where young Bich (pronounced 'bic') wrestled with conflicting desires for her grandmother's native cooking and the American junk food the 'real people' around her ate. The fascination with Pringles and Happy Meals is one symptom of the memoir's frequent reliance on the surface details of pop culture to generate verisimilitude instead of digging deeper into the emotional realities of her family drama, which plays out as her father drinks and broods and her stepmother, Rosa, tries to maintain a tight discipline. Readers are inundated with the songs Nguyen heard on the radio and the TV shows she watched — even her childhood thoughts about Little House on the Prairie — but tantalizing questions about her family remain unresolved, like why her father and stepmother continued to live together after their divorce. The mother left behind in Saigon is a shadowy presence who only comes into view briefly toward the end, another line of inquiry Nguyen chooses not to pursue too deeply. The passages that most intensely describe Nguyen's childhood desire to assimilate compensate somewhat for such gaps, but the overall impression is muted." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:“Only a truly gifted writer could make me long for the Kool Aid, Rice a Roni, and Kit Kats celebrated in Stealing Buddha's Dinner. In this charming, funny, original memoir about growing up as an outsider in America, Bich Nguyen takes you on a journey you won't forget. I can hardly wait for what comes next.”
--Judy Blume
Synopsis:In this viscerally powerful memoir, Nguyen pens a nostalgic, candid account of growing up as a Vietnamese girl in the Midwest in the 1980s, and using popular American food--from Pringles potato chips to Toll House cookies--as a way to fit in and become a RrealS American. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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