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Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir | 
| Author: Bich Minh Nguyen
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $6.64
You Save: $18.31 (73%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 528211
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1
ISBN: 1852385391
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.45600495922092
EAN: 9781852385392
ASIN: B000X1T2A0
Publication Date: February 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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, Nguyens barely conscious desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic seeming than her Buddhist grandmothers traditional specialtiesspring rolls, delicate pancakes stuffed with meats, fried shrimp cakesthe 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 Nguyens familys harrowing migration from Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddhas Dinner is 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 lukewarm June 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is just okay. There were a few insighful moments about acculturation and religion, but nothing really new in the ethnic-american and/or memoir genre. It's a nice collection of memories, especially if you grew up in the 1980's. However, it lacks good storytelling. Nothing really happens. I find it surprising that the author teaches literature and creative writing. Overall, disappointing.
 Very enjoyable... May 28, 2008
There is much to enjoy in "Stealing Buddha's Dinner." It is a nostalgic, pop culture fueled book that will appeal to anyone who can't leave the '80s behind. It is also a touching, almost gut wrenching story about Vietnamese boat people and their assimilation in the US. These two threads coalesce in a narrative that is centered around eating, particularly the American junk food that Bich Minh Nguyen glamorizes while growing up in Grand Rapids, MI.
On the food front, I can relate to the author. I grew up in Minnesota during the same years, and my childhood was full of longing for the colorful candy and fast food that my parents disallowed. I used to steal away to the neighbors and luxuriate in junk food and bad TV. Good times. (Then again, when candy and toys look alike, that may be a sign of a culture headed towards an obesity epidemic. But I digress.) Nguyen writes in great detail about food, making this the literary equivalent of those nostalgia picture books that take you back. She also ties in a lot of pop culture -- music, TV, clothes. food -- somehow all these things slip into one category.
Far more poignant are Nguyen's tales of her assimilation into American culture. I wasn't expecting this to go as deeply as it did; by the end the author has learned family secrets and reunited with lost relatives. I was almost crying by the evocative final chapter. It's amazing to me what people go through to get to this country, only to be met by mixed blessings.
"Stealing Buddha's Dinner" is not without its problems. It skips around a lot, and many chapters don't rise to the quality of writing that the last few paragraphs achieve. Call it uneven. It is also truthful, fun, moving, and engrossing. I doubt I'll read this author again, but I'm grateful for this dip into her world.
 Engaging and entertaining read. February 7, 2008
As a child of the 80s (which was truly a silly time to grow up with the hairstyles and fractal patterned Trapper Keepers and whatnot), and a lover of food, I found much to love about this book.
There were a few passages that I found to be a little off-track, like the chapter where the author rhapsodizes about the Laura Ingalls Wilder's books.
But on the whole, I viewed it as a tiny but vivid window into the immigrant experience. I could find some way to relate to every member of the author's family, even when they were not on their best behaviour. I especially loved her depiction of her grandmother, Noi, who has such a lovely peaceful and nuturing presence throughout the book.
The book was thoughtfully crafted and planned out, and beautifully written. I would recommend it to others.
I related January 29, 2008
As a Vietnamese-American, I related on so many levels. I laughed out loud, too many similar thoughts and experiences.
Stealing Buddha's Dinner - a fascinating memoir January 18, 2008
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.
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