Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen

Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen

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

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13
Title	Stealing Buddha's Dinner
Author	Bich Minh Nguyen
Condition	Unavailable
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Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.