In the book, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, it is a memoir of a Vietnamese girl struggling to be, what she believes is a true American girl. Food plays a major role in this story. The Vietnamese food Bich was used to is nothing like the new food she experiences in America (she lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is cool because it is so close to where we live). She becomes addicted to all the sweets, candy, pop, sugars, chips, ice cream, and everything America sells. She falls in love with all food American. The longer she lives in America, the more food she consumes, the less she enjoys of her grandma's Vietnamese food.
The more English she speaks, the more American TV shows she watches, the less she can remember her Vietnamese language. Her culture is slowly slipping away, as her strive to be American grows. All of her friends, are white and blonde, and have house-wife moms that slave in the kitchen all day making steaks, Tollhouse cookies, Betty Crocker Cakes, and Stouffer meals. Bich eats cha-gio or whatever else her grandma prepares with straigh-up Vietnamese ingrediants. She wants more than anything to eat the moist Tollhouse cookies, and learn how to cut a steak. In her book, she frequently describes dreams of all the wonderful name-brand foods. She reads books like Little House on the Prarie, and imagines American settlement life, instead of going to Vietnamese parties.
She begins to pray to Buddha as if he were the Catholic God. Angry he won't reply, she steals a sacred plum set out for Buddha and her ancestors and eats it (hence the title, Stealing Buddha's Dinner). But I feel like the title goes farther than that. She didn't just disregard, disrespect and test her relgion, her faith, and culture-- but she ate it. She destroyed what she had always known between her teeth, for American culture. Her strive to fit in, and be American over won her Vietnamese mind.
The more English she speaks, the more American TV shows she watches, the less she can remember her Vietnamese language. Her culture is slowly slipping away, as her strive to be American grows. All of her friends, are white and blonde, and have house-wife moms that slave in the kitchen all day making steaks, Tollhouse cookies, Betty Crocker Cakes, and Stouffer meals. Bich eats cha-gio or whatever else her grandma prepares with straigh-up Vietnamese ingrediants. She wants more than anything to eat the moist Tollhouse cookies, and learn how to cut a steak. In her book, she frequently describes dreams of all the wonderful name-brand foods. She reads books like Little House on the Prarie, and imagines American settlement life, instead of going to Vietnamese parties.
She begins to pray to Buddha as if he were the Catholic God. Angry he won't reply, she steals a sacred plum set out for Buddha and her ancestors and eats it (hence the title, Stealing Buddha's Dinner). But I feel like the title goes farther than that. She didn't just disregard, disrespect and test her relgion, her faith, and culture-- but she ate it. She destroyed what she had always known between her teeth, for American culture. Her strive to fit in, and be American over won her Vietnamese mind.
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