Common Read author addresses UI community
When Bich Nguyen, author of “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner,” told her father that she was writing a memoir, he laughed and asked her, “Why would anyone want to read a book about us?”
The memoir Nguyen told her father about is now a novel and this year’s University of Idaho Common Read pick. The story is about Nguyen coming of age after arriving in America as a Vietnamese refugee in 1975.
Nguyen visited UI this week to give a keynote address about her book, writing processes and life since the novel was published. The keynote, which was held in the SUB Ballroom, was open to all, although freshmen were prominently in attendance.
The Common Read is used as a tool in Integrated Seminar courses to give each incoming class an underlying theme, and provide collegiate discussions a greater context.
“In the course of teaching ‘Stealing Buddha’s Dinner,’ I have found that Bich’s experiences ring true for many of my own students,” said Sayantani Dasgupta, a UI lecturer and member of the Common Read Selection Committee. “Ultimately the book is about the process of growing up and making sense of the world as it unfolds around us.”
Nguyen’s speech was a mixture of genuine advice, unrestricted experiences and offbeat humor. She grew up in the 1980s — a time she described as before words like “multiculturalism” and “diversity,” a time when fashion was so bad it was good, and when kids were told what to be by listening to TV and radio.
Nguyen said she was stuck in the one-and-a-half generation, neither born in America nor raised in Vietnam. She said she created a division between the Vietnamese world at home and the white, American world outside, where she was embarrassed by her culture, looks and food.
Food was a critical motif of the novel because it represented Nguyen’s longing to fit in. While she could not control her looks or history, she said she could control what she ate, which led her to consume everything American — from Hostess cakes to McDonalds.
“I didn’t know what it was to be Vietnamese, so instead I decided to be American,” Nguyen said. “What we eat, what we crave, defines who we are.”
There is a paradox in America’s “melting pot,” Nguyen said. For everyone’s cultures and beliefs to melt and blend they must inherently lose a part of their own identities. She said food is something immigrants can keep, which is why America has such a diverse range of cuisine, and why it plays such a huge part in the novel. Symbolism doesn’t happen in real time, only in retrospect, she said.
On her interest in literature, Nguyen said she wanted to write from a young age, but felt stifled from trying to mold her work after the American and British styles she had read almost exclusively throughout elementary and high school. But in college, she delved into writing because she was exposed to a wider range of perspectives and ideas from people of every ethnicity and background.
“The more I read, the more permission I got to tell my story,” Nguyen said. “I recommend you give yourself permission, and have curiosity — look inward and upward and forward and backward all at the same time.”
Nguyen also gave updates on her family, offering closure to the hundreds of students who read her work. She said her father and stepmother are still married, having converted one of their home’s extra bedrooms to a dance room — disco ball and all. After the book came out, she said her father bought discounted copies on Amazon and sold them at full price to all of his friends.
The novel was chosen by the Common Read Selection Committee, which included a number of UI staff members and students.
“This is the moment where young people start to figure out their identities, who they are and where they think they’re going, and the book was very powerful in that sense,” said Andrew Kersten, dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences. “I think the event was a smashing success. I was very impressed with how many students came up, and very proud of my campus.”
So why, as her father so eloquently asked, would anyone want to read a book about Nguyen’s family — about a young Vietnamese-American girl caught between two cultures?
“Because our stories, your stories, matter,” Nguyen said.
Alyssa Baugh can be reached at [email protected]