Andrea MacMichael

Food and Travel Seminar

9/19/16

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner Ch. 1-9 Reading Response

            After reading the first nine chapters of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, I feel a mix of emotions.  I feel like a little kid again, mesmerized by the television commercials and the brand-name cookies, candies, drinks, and snacks filling the grocery stores that also fill Bich’s mind every minute of the day. These chapters were endearing and powerful. We are able to get a glimpse of what it was like for Bich Nguyen and her family (without her birth mother) to move to Grand Rapids from Vietnam during the late 1970s, which was a very difficult and tense time period. I feel disheartened that so many immigrant families like Bich’s had to struggle financially and socially during this time, but I also understand, better, why such burdens were so prevalent.   

I believe one of the themes that came across very strongly in this piece was identity. Bich describes how her hair never falls in the same beautiful way as her sister, Anh’s does, and how she feels the need to impress everyone at school by having the perfect lunch packed. In this way I could sense Bich’s worry and uneasiness towards growing up and presenting herself in her new American community as an “outsider”. I can imagine it would be beyond tiresome to balance one’s own cultural traditions and beliefs while also trying to fit into another culture. The reading to this point, revolves around food, and I believe this is because we are learning about such complex things as identity and beliefs and growing up in a foreign land through the eyes of a young girl. I found it endearing to read how she felt such happiness and excitement towards boxes of mac and cheese, ice cream, or jiffy muffins. In my mind, the Vietnamese dishes she ate seemed much more interesting. It seems as though she learned more through sight and the food culture in America than from anything else. I believe that Bich built her identity in America based on the food she ate. More than anything else, such as building friendships, or learning the English language, she found her introduction to America through the packaged foods that were the rave of this time period. She couldn’t look like everyone else, but she could, with sufficient begging and the sales at the grocery store, feel like she fit in by eating the popular foods. In a similar way, I believe she was also able to feel “at home” in America by eating the Vietnamese cuisine her grandmother continued to make. The Vietnamese food was a piece of her homeland that could withstand cultural boundaries.

As the chapters progressed, the more she grew and the more she began to recognize not just how food could indicate social standing, but also how political views and complex ideas were shaping American and immigrant life during this time period. Her voice was becoming even more mature and insightful. I am excited to see how Bich’s ideas of the world and her identity are influenced in the rest of the book.