Beginning with her family's harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha's Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest. Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen's desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food - Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies. More exotic-seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled "delicacies" of mainstream America become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to become a "real" American. Stealing Buddha's Dinner is also a portrayal of a diverse family: Nguyen's hardworking, hard-partying father; pretty sister; wise and nurturing grandmother; and Rosa, her Latina stepmother. And there is the mystery of Nguyen's birth mother, unveiled movingly over the course of the book. Nostalgic and candid, Stealing Buddha's Dinner is a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for.
"Her typical and not-so-typical childhood experiences give her story a universal flavor." - USA Today
"Beautifully written...[Nguyen] is fearless in asserting the specificities of memories culled from early childhood and is, herself, an appealing character on the page...A writer to watch." - Chicago Tribune
"Perfectly pitched and prodigiously detailed." - The Boston Globe
A word to the wise: Don't listen to this memoir on an empty stomach, as its descriptions of international cuisine, and even of American junk food, may send you snacking! Such passages occur often in Nguyen's story of her family's settlement in the U.S. The memoir is delivered clearly by Alice Kennedy. While she might have enhanced her performance by slowing her pace and adding more expression in parts, she narrates with ease and doesn't seem to struggle with Vietnamese pronunciations. The book's many references to pop culture of the eighties are fun. A.E.B. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Bich Minh Nguyen (pronounced Bit Min New-win) teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University. She lives with her husband, the novelist Porter Shreve, in Chicago and West Lafayette, Indiana. Stealing Buddha's Dinner, her first book, was the recipient of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award.
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