Stealing Buddha's Dinner
A Memoir
New York : Viking, 2007.
Format: Book
Description: 256 pages ; 22 cm
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, NguyenÂs barely conscious desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic seeming than her Buddhist grandmotherÂs traditional specialtiesÂspring rolls, delicate pancakes stuffed with meats, fried shrimp cakesÂthe campy, preservative-filled Âdelicacies 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 Âreal American.Beginning with NguyenÂs familyÂs harrowing migration from Saigon in 1975, Stealing BuddhaÂs Dinneris 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.
Subjects:
Nguyen, Bich Minh -- Childhood and youth.
Immigrants -- Michigan -- Grand Rapids -- Biography.
Vietnamese Americans -- Michigan -- Grand Rapids -- Biography.
Americans -- Food.
Grand Rapids (Mich.) -- Biography.
Nguyen, Bich Minh -- Childhood and youth.
Immigrants -- Michigan -- Grand Rapids -- Biography.
Vietnamese Americans -- Michigan -- Grand Rapids -- Biography.
Americans -- Food.
Grand Rapids (Mich.) -- Biography.
ISBN:
0670038326
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
BIOGRAPHY Nguyen, Bich Minh | Southeast | Biography | Out (Due: 4/18/2024) |