Customer Reviews

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Although I am a Chinese immigrant, I too grew up in Michigan and have been to Grand Rapids many times. I can absolutely identify with the author about....everything (except for the mixed family part). The food references is something only us first generation immigrant children who long to be Americanized can fully comprehend. The author's statements about being so wrapped up in everyday American foods and the struggle to get them and immersing yourself in the fascination of your fellow classmates lives made me realize that I wasn't the only "weird" asian little girl who longed for all these seemingly ordinary things. I also identified with her escape to her books (the ramona quinbys and the little women. I really felt like this could've been my memoir. This book is really something every first generation immigrant child should read, if only to know you're not alone in feeling this way.

I had to read this memoir for school and was pleased with it. I enjoyed the writing style and getting into the shoes of a foreign family. The way the author writes about the food makes me crave candy, spaghetti-o's, fruit and pho. The book had a nice flow to it and kept me interested throughout the novel. However, this was a memoir for her childhood and she added in bits at the end where she was an adult in college, so there seems to be a good 5-10 year gap where the author seems to go from a young, awkward little girl to an adult in college. It was nice to read this parts, and felt the section closed the book well, but the gap made the the ending feel awkward and incomplete. I would have rather have had a few extra chapters for the later teenage years.

I brought the Stealing Buddha's Dinner from public library last week for my daughter to read. But I ended up reading for myself before she attempted to read. I liked the author's cultural confusion experience. This is because being an Indian(Hindu) immigrant I myself get confused about the culture in America once in a while. Thankfully I or my family did not face the hardships the author and her family did face while adusting to American life. I like and respect Mrs. Rosa, Mrs. Bich stepmom, the best. The ending is really touching and good. Has nice title to attract the readers.

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Bich Minh Nyugen

This is the memoir of a young Vietnamese girl growing up in 1980's Michigan. Bich Nyugen tells her emotional story--- of being a Vietnamese immigrant after the fall of Saigon, 1975.

Not long after settling in Michigan, Bich's father marries a Hispanic woman. It is interesting to see yet another culture blend into Bich's young life. Throughout the book we gradually learn about Bich's mother and the mystery surrounding her absence.

Bich artfully exposes moments and facts through food, tradition, culture, and the youthful desire to "fit in", to "belong". Her story is both universal and intimate.

A very unique memoir, sweet and poignant, its flavor will linger.

What I most enjoyed about this book was gaining some insite to becoming a new American and how difficult even the most every day things can become. I also appreciated the last half of the book when the author was an adult and that persective. I think we can all relate in that we are familiar with our own culture and when we find ourselves on the outside it feels very different. Imagining what it must be like to leave your home land and culture is very thought provoking. This book is the authors memories and not a story per say, because of that I really enjoyed it. It was an easy read and I would recommend it.

Stealing Buddha's Dinner is the memoir of a Vietnamese American woman named Bich. Her family relocates to Grand Rapids, Mi where she grows up as a Vietnamese American in the 1980`s. Michigan's own GR-the city of homogenous milk-- I mean blondes, causes extreme identity crises for the young Vietnamese immigrant. With American popular culture by her side, Bich forges through her childhood, and manages to keep more than a few good memories.

Bich was just eight months old, her sister two years, when they fled Saigon. Traveling with her father, grandmother and uncles, her mother was not with them. Their route was first to the Philippines , then Guam, and then to Arkansas in the U.S. Once at the refugee camp, they were given three choices of where they would like to relocate; California, Wyoming, and Michigan. Her grandmother's friend had told her that her son received a scholarship to the University of Michigan and so...Michigan it was. Throughout the book, the author struggles with being different than everyone else. "In school hallways blond heads glided, illuminated in the lockers creaking open and slamming shut taunting me to be what I only wished I could be. That was the dilemma, the push and pull. The voice saying, Come on in. Now transform. And if you cannot, then disappear."(11) The fact that it wasn't trendy yet to be ethnic in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, added to Bich's push factor. "Throughout my childhood I wondered, so often it became a buzzing dullness, why we had ended up here, and why we couldn't leave. I would stare at the map of the United States and imagine us in New York or Boston or Los Angeles. I had no idea what such cities were like, but I was convinced people were happier out on the coasts, living in a nexus between so much land and water."(12) Happiness was never far with the fast food nation at it's peak, and Bich enjoyed much of it. From Pringles to Bublicious, she devoured America's finest snacks. A Burger King drive through story is a vivid memory. Her father and Mexican step-mother are driving through a Burger King because they heard that if you said, "Whopper beat the Big Mac," you would get a free whopper. Her father said it first, then her step-mother, then her sisters. She wasn't quite sure...when she saw her father giving her a look. Then she noticed that her sisters were starting to do the same. "Out of the corner of my eye I could see my sisters looking intently away, as if already separating themselves from me...I leaned forward and whispered, "Whopper beat the Big Mac."(55)

The author's affection for American popular culture helps her assimilate as Vietnamese American. Throughout the book, Bich struggles with the empty feeling of being unaccepted. A meeting with her long lost mother brings more questions and unidentifiable feelings. The author has a pleasing style of prose that is subtlety humorous. Bich's assimilation story is multi-layered and excitingly unique.

What a flashback to growing up in the 80's. Anyone can relate to Bich's experiences during a time of great influtration of diversity in America. Though most of us may not feel exactly the same through each experience as she , we all can relate somehow. Memories of my own childhood were sketched out in her writings. Duran Duran, Ponderosa, and even trying Chinese food for the first time. I remember well when kids of other than white angelo would move into town. All of us kids thought it was exciting and wanted to share our culture with the kids and learn theirs as well. You should have moved to my neck of the woods. We all could have tried figure things out together.