Introduce and Analyze "Stealing Buddha's Dinner"
The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the book "Stealing Buddha's Dinner" by Bich Minh Nguyen. Specifically it will discuss what the reader learned about Vietnamese culture by reading the book. This book is a very enlightening glimpse into Vietnamese culture by a young woman who immigrated to America in 1975 from Vietnam with her family, and desperately wanted to fit in to American society. In her attempts to become westernized, she paints vivid portraits of the culture she left behind and now wants to give up. The author has a very eloquent way of telling her story and weaving in details of Vietnamese culture, even though she tried so hard to resist its influence in her life. For example, she notes that she does not celebrate a birthday, because her father could not remember the family's birthdays when they first immigrated to America, and so, the date of birth on all her official documents is wrong. She writes, "Perhaps because his mind was distracted, or perhaps because in Vietnam death is remembered mo
She seems like every American kid in the 1970s, just trying to fit in and not really interested in her own culture. Thankfully, she becomes more aware of her culture and background later in the book, when she visits Vietnam and comes to understand more of her roots and what her family remembers of their own home. re than birthdays, my father forgot our birthdays when he had to write them down at the refugee camp in Guam" (Nguyen, 2007, pg. I had assumed that many of the Vietnamese people wanted Communism, but it is clear that many did not, and despised it. The real flag, my stepmother reminded me, not the evil Communist flag" (Nguyen, 2007, pg. It is also interesting that it was her stepmother who explained Communism to Bich, and not her father, who should have had much more experience with it trying to take over his country. Not a ghost, but something like memory, a respect for the past" (Nguyen, 2007, pg. Later in the book she notes, "My father had always said that their spirits were with us and it seemed a comfort. She says of the drums for the dance, "The drums were yellow, and striped with red to mimic the Vietnamese flag. This is an excellent book, because it shows how difficult it is for immigrants to fit into our culture while retaining their own values and identities. Her parents were interested, and wanted to help the children remember, but the children were much more interested in American foods, American culture, and becoming fully Americanized. They left their country because of this hatred, and started new lives in America.
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Acceptance Essays
