Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir [Paperback]

Bich Minh Nguyen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2008

As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, and in the pre-PC-era Midwest (where the Jennifers and Tiffanys reign supreme), the desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic- seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled "delicacies" of mainstream America capture her imagination.

In Stealing Buddha's Dinner, the glossy branded allure of Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House Cookies becomes an ingenious metaphor for Nguyen's struggle to become a "real" American, a distinction that brings with it the dream of the perfect school lunch, burgers and Jell- O for dinner, and a visit from the Kool-Aid man. Vivid and viscerally powerful, this remarkable memoir about growing up in the 1980s introduces an original new literary voice and an entirely new spin on the classic assimilation story.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Relevant not only to anyone who''s ever lusted after the perfect snack . . . but anyone who''s ever felt like an outsider."
-San Francisco Chronicle

"A charming memoir . . . Her prose is engaging, precise, compact."
-The New York Times Book Review

"Her typical and not-so-typical childhood experiences give her story a universal flavor."
-USA Today

About the Author

Bich Minh Nguyen teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University. She lives with her husband, the novelist Porter Shreve, in West Lafayette, Indiana and Chicago.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143113038
• ISBN-13: 978-0143113034
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( B ) > Buddha

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Metaphor as a weapon, May 15, 2009

By 

Kirvi Dances "Kirvi Dances" (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stealing Buddha's Dinner (Paperback)

While Ms. Nguyen does an amazing job of crafting a portrait of her childhood experiences, the food symbolism gets a bit heavy-handed by the middle of the book. In fact, by the final chapter, I felt like I had been bludgeoned with it.

While the reader is drawn in to her experience, we are never quite able to sympathize with her.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a Vietnamese childhood in Michigan with Hispanic influences, August 11, 2009

By 

ED "rr" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir (Paperback)

Very fun memoir of growing up Vietnamese with a Hispanic step-mom in Grand Rapids Michigan. Very readable and insightful book about American culture as seen through a young immigrant's eyes. I wish the author had been willing to "dig deeper" because after I finished the book there were many unanswered questions for me particularly with regard to the author's biological mother and with regard to her relationship with her father. Sometimes it seemed that the author used humor to avoid dealing with the larger issues. Also, the obsession with food becomes a bit silly and redundant.-- I read this for my book club, and it was not something that I would have picked out, but I enjoyed it... very humorous and the author writes beautifully; my 14 year old daughter wants to read it now. --Great book for middle schoolers and young teens.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A memoir written too soon, July 26, 2009

By 

Sheri Dillinger (West Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir (Paperback)

Nguyen's description of the Grand Rapids culture and it's effects on outsiders hit the mark dead center. Her memory of the many food commodities of the time is precisely accurate. The unspoken observation of the limited perspective and smallness of aspiration of that time rings true. The feeling of suffocation while living this place briefly as an adolescent and then as an adult, decades later, returned with the reading of her memoir. But she left me wanting. Her purpose for writing the story eluded me. The themes, a precise retrospective and the angst of the outsider, are lacking a depth of reflection and a commentary of their impact on the author. I would love for Nguyen to revisit her experiences at some point in the future and give us a more substantive review, beyond observation and statement. I would like to know if that feeling of being an outsider follows her beyond this city and through time. I want to hear if, twenty years from now, she still craves Pringles. Sometimes a memoir can be written too soon. I believe that is the case with this book.