2019 Common Read - FYE 100 - College Engagement Seminar - Pilgrim Library at Defiance College

2019 FYE 100 - COMMON READ

Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen
ISBN: 9780143113034
Publication Date: 2008-01-29

As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, and in the pre-PC-era Midwest (where the Jennifers and Tiffanys reign supreme), the desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic- seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled "delicacies" of mainstream America capture her imagination.

In Stealing Buddha's Dinner, the glossy branded allure of Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House Cookies becomes an ingenious metaphor for Nguyen's struggle to become a "real" American, a distinction that brings with it the dream of the perfect school lunch, burgers and Jell- O for dinner, and a visit from the Kool-Aid man. Vivid and viscerally powerful, this remarkable memoir about growing up in the 1980s introduces an original new literary voice and an entirely new spin on the classic assimilation story.

"I came of age in the 1980s, before diversity and multicultural awareness trickled into western Michigan. Before ethnic was cool. Before Thai restaurants became staples in every town. When I think of Grand Rapids I remember city signs covered in images of rippling flags, proclaiming “An All-American City.” Throughout the eighties a giant billboard looming over the downtown freeway boasted the slogan to all who drove the three-lane S-curve. As a kid, I couldn’t figure out what “All-American” was supposed to mean. Was it a promise, a threat, a warning?" ~Bich Minh Nugyen

AUTHOR VISIT AND PRESENTATION

The author of the 2019 common read, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, Bich Minh Nguyen, teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University. She lives with her husband, the novelist Porter Shreve, in West Lafayette, Indiana and Chicago. She will be on campus Tuesday, October 22. She will have a dinner reception at 5pm with FYE faculty and select students then she will give a presentation for all FYE 100 students with a Q&A at 7pm in Schomburg Auditorium followed by a book signing at 8pm.