Stealing Buddah's Dinner: Bich Minh Nguyen

"Beginning with her family's harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddah'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 specialities, the campy, preservative-filled 'delacacies' of mainstream American become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to become a 'real' American.  Stealing Buddah'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 Buddah'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."

This was another book that was assigned for my Story of Food course.  It's a thin little book that I was not especially enthusiastic about starting; but once I did, I couldn't put it down.  Perhaps it's because I come from a family where our immigrant roots are still very powerful (my mother is only first-generation American) or a personal struggle with food that I can relate to.  Either way, this book was extremely poignant and powerful.

Bich's, along with her older sister, father, grandmother, and uncles flee Vietnam at the end of the war -- managing to escape on one of the last boats available.  Once arriving in the United States, they are relegated to a refugee camp, where they can do nothing but hope, wait, and eat the unattractive food until they gain a sponsor and move to Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Her first taste of "outside" life in the U.S. is spent in an unsafe neighborhood, but it filled with American candy, treats, and snacks brought home by her father.  Their Vietnamese roots were kept alive (throughout the entire story) by her grandmother, Noi.  She would prepare classic Vietnamese dishes, meditate, and leave food for Buddah and their ancestors.  Noi, Bich, and Bich's older sister, Anh, would practice their daily routine of leaving food for Boddah on the altar where the girls would have to wait to enjoy the treat.  Only when Noi determined it was ready would she divide the fruit between her granddaughters and the girls would savor each morsel.  The simplicity of these days is changed when Bich's father meets a Latina woman named Rosa, marries her (when she is well along in her pregnancy with their son, Vinh), and she and her daughter from a previous marriage, Crissy, come to love with Bich's family in their already full little home.  The blend of another culture (Rosa's Latin heritage) seems to only further Bich's confusion, and makes her struggle to fit in with the Americans even more complex.

The little girl sees food as her "in" with the rest of the American children.  Throughout the book, she desperately tries to get her hands on anything and everything she sees her schoolmates eating.  She longs for the same candy and chips; the homemade cookies and lovingly prepared lunches carried to school in fancy tupperware containers; the beef stroganoff and stuffed peppers.  Bich's attempt to be "American" is attacked from the inside-out.  She cannot make her appearance over into the blond hair and blue eyes of her classmates, so her attempts to eat like they do are her way of trying to assimilate.  These attempts, however, are thwarted by Rosa's thriftiness (or cheapness, depending on one's perception) and the strength of her ties to her Vietnamese roots.  Bich is trapped between two worlds and this book provides a powerful account of what it is like to grow up as an immigrant in our country.

This story is beautifully written and, oftentimes, hauntingly sad.  It is the tale of a little girl who feels like an outsider -- an outcast -- because of where she comes from.  Bich Nguyen is an eloquent author with quite the childhood and I completely recommend this book to everyone either interested in the way food shapes culture, an autobiographical account of the childhood of Vietnamese immigrant, or learning acceptance for those who come from a different place than we do.

(Side note:  I'm a huge fan of Vietnamese food (and I'm really sad that I cannot get it anywhere near where I currently live...) and this book presents a beautiful account of what makes this cuisine so unique and wonderful.)