September 1, 2023
When Pol Pot ascended to power in Cambodia, killing millions, ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon's family were especially targeted. She escaped to Saigon with her mother and sister, who both died there, and spent decades in a Thai refugee camp until she was denied passage to the West and returned to Cambodia. Through numerous small jobs like serving drinks in a nightclub, she was sustained by one thing: the memories of her mother's cooking. Unfathomable loss, illuminated by 20 recipes; with a 20,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.
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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 1, 2023
In an evocative, haunting memoir, a survivor of Cambodia's "Year Zero" generation recounts how memories of her culinary heritage have sustained her. Some tragedies are almost too large to describe. One of history's most notorious was the genocide imposed by Pol Pot on Cambodia in the early 1970s, a project to destroy the societal structure and replace it with an agrarian society based on twisted Marxist principles. "The murderers among us would have us believe that history is slippery and unknowable," she writes. "Insisting otherwise is an act of defiance." Nguon and her family, half Vietnamese, were obvious targets, and they escaped to Saigon just in time for the arrival of the conquering North Vietnamese army. Nguon managed to scrape together a living with various jobs, although she often subsisted on small bowls of rice with some salt. Through the years of suffering and resilience, the author remembers the beautiful, subtle tastes of the Khmer dishes made by her mother, and she punctuates the book with recipes and the memories tied to them. Ngoun was shuffled between refugee camps before she was sent back to Cambodia, which was slowly emerging from chaos. Among other jobs, she worked as a cook for brothel workers, and she had the advantage of being literate and was good at making contacts. With the help of aid organizations, she was able to set up a center for helping Khmer women, teaching them silk weaving and providing literacy classes. Many parts of the text are heart-rendingly sad, but the author leavens the narrative with recipes for dishes like chicken lime soup and banh sung. Though the subject matter makes the book a sometimes difficult read, those who dive in will find it a remarkable and important piece of work. A moving book that mixes horror and hope, disaster and good food, creating a poignant, fascinating read.
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January 8, 2024
In this engrossing and evocative debut memoir, Nguon recounts how her mother’s recipes sustained her family through poverty and genocidal violence. Raised in a middle-class, half Vietnamese family in Battambang, Cambodia, in the 1960s, Nguon learned to cook Khmer food by shadowing her mother, whom she affectionately called “Mae.” In 1970, as the Vietnam War spilled over Cambodia’s borders and communist revolutionary Pol Pot began his rise to power, Nguon and her siblings fled to Saigon, leaving their mother and oldest brother behind to “sort out the family’s affairs.” Five years later, after the death of her mother and most of her siblings, Nguon escaped Saigon with her boyfriend, Chan, and bounced around various refugee camps in Thailand, where she worked as bartender, brothel cook, medical assistant, and silkweaver. Eventually, Nguon returned to Cambodia to open the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center, where she continues to provide food and education to Khmer women. Throughout, Nguon interweaves the hardships she endured with her favorite recipes and the memories attached to them, offering readers evocative glimpses of the bursts of light that sustained her through long stretches of harrowing darkness. This haunting yet hopeful account will appeal to foodies and history buffs alike. Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary.
January 1, 2024
From fleeing the Khmer Rouge to surviving war-torn Saigon and enduring Thai refugee camps, Chantha Nguon's memoir-with-recipes serves diverse plates of resilience set against inconceivable human suffering. Demonstrating an exceptional sensitivity to the cultural, social, and political significance of food, Nguon extends cooking metaphors across documentations of war, poverty, sexual exploitation, and authoritative terror--a fearless invitation for readers to taste the pain of families torn apart and futures broken down. Alongside this narrative of losses, Nguon whisks genres to include recipes for remaking her family's dishes and surviving traumatic moments, providing an unforgettable, tactile intimacy between writer and reader. A survivor, witness, and cofounder of the Cambodian Stung Treng Women's Development Center, Nguon details others' suffering--particularly that of women forced into prostitution--with empathy, creating a long-term recipe for resilience, coined "Slow Noodles logic," that foregrounds self-sufficiency. With hunger for gender equality and attention to class differences, this memoir is also a redemptive homecoming to parts of Cambodian history still fresh in many minds and a meditation on the beginnings of a new Cambodia.
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Starred review from March 29, 2024
Cambodian activist Nguon, assisted by writer and public radio producer Green, shares her family recipes as she reflects on the grief, hunger, and rootlessness she experienced after Pol Pot's ascension to power. Though Nguon, the daughter of a Cambodian father and a Vietnamese mother, enjoyed a relatively prosperous early childhood, her family's peace was shattered by racially motivated violence, which intensified and forced them to flee to Saigon in 1975. In the ensuing years, she experienced the crushing deaths of her mother and siblings, the terror of living under North Vietnamese rule, and despair at losing her home and livelihood. She later left Vietnam, spending years in Thai refugee camps, only to be unceremoniously returned to Cambodia. Even then, Nguon survived and eventually opened a center to provide Khmer women with employment, job training, and medical care. Throughout this time, she was sustained by memories of her family's recipes, which embodied the love, hard work, and resilience of her family and her community. Balancing bitter and sweet, her recipes and their names range from humorous (Silken Rebellion Fish Fry) to touching (Banh Sung of Forgiveness). VERDICT A stunning memoir, spiced with delectable and occasionally devastating recipes. This is unmissable.--Sarah Hashimoto
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