Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir

By Bich Minh Nguyen

Book Overview

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 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 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670038326
• ISBN13: 9780670038329
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.1" x 5.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Reminds me of my past...

This really made me go back to my childhood. I can relate to her need to fit in and find her identity. I agree that the food gets a bit over-done, especially when she goes into detail about The Little House on the Prairie. However it is wonderfully written, and reminded me of feelings and ideas that I have not thought about in years.

Stealing Buddha's Dinner - a fascinating memoir

I really enjoyed this book. It is a fascinating look at the complications of being a first generation Vietmamese American. The places where cultures clash are sometimes very amusing and sometimes hard to take, but always enlightening.

I LOVED this book!

My favorite book of the year! A must read for any lonely, food obsessed bookworm of the 70/80's raised on television. I never wanted it to end.

Children of the 80's unite!

If you were born in the mid-70's and spent your youth as a child of the 80's, with it's neon colors and extreme excess, you will love this book. It is a social commentary on what so glaringly tacky about the 80's, so obviously and grossly "American" that you can't help but smile. All of the over-processed food that Bith idolizes, that were staples for so many of us "American" children are placed on a pedestal by this charming, young woman caught between two cultures. I confess, I took my Kraft blue box Mac and Cheese for granted. I highly recommend this book. Bith is a wonderfully expressive writer and this is an easy, fun read.

A book to savor and devour

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.