j&j2
04-27-2007, 03:20 PM
"That old cliche, you are what you eat-- I remember hearing that as a kid and thinking that it made a lot of sense," Nguyen said with a laugh, sitting at a window table at NoMI recently, high above Michigan Avenue, as a waiter poured cauliflower soup from a little silver pitcher into her bowl.
And during her Vietnamese-immigrant childhood, what she wanted to be more than anything was "a real American, the right kind of American," she said.
Nguyen's father fled Saigon as it fell, with his extended family in tow (Nguyen was 8 months old), and ended up in Grand Rapids, Mich., with $5 in his pocket. Growing up in their crowded household in the 1980s, while her grandmother was stocking Buddha's altar with fresh fruit for their dead ancestors and feeding the family Vietnamese cooking that filled the air with pungent odors, Nguyen was falling in love with American junk food, dreaming and scheming about her next appointment with Little Debbie, Big Boy, Dolly Madison, Chef Boyardee and Burger King.
"My parents couldn't buy me the other sorts of accoutrements, the clothes," Nguyen said of their limited means. But junk food gave her access. "It had this symbolic weight to it. It was like being someone else -- the blond girl I always wanted to be."
"When I was a kid I did feel like I had to choose between being American and being Vietnamese, and for me there was almost no choice," she said, as a small silver dish of pureed potatoes arrived at the table, along with a beautiful golden beet salad with blue cheese.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/living/chi-0704260444apr27,1,561095.story?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl
So what does an article about Hostess Cupcakes and other junk food have to do with being "Asian" or being "American"?
Evidently, for this Asian-American female - a lot had to do with it - and unfortunately, this line of thinking is all too common among young, impressionable Asian-American kids.
And during her Vietnamese-immigrant childhood, what she wanted to be more than anything was "a real American, the right kind of American," she said.
Nguyen's father fled Saigon as it fell, with his extended family in tow (Nguyen was 8 months old), and ended up in Grand Rapids, Mich., with $5 in his pocket. Growing up in their crowded household in the 1980s, while her grandmother was stocking Buddha's altar with fresh fruit for their dead ancestors and feeding the family Vietnamese cooking that filled the air with pungent odors, Nguyen was falling in love with American junk food, dreaming and scheming about her next appointment with Little Debbie, Big Boy, Dolly Madison, Chef Boyardee and Burger King.
"My parents couldn't buy me the other sorts of accoutrements, the clothes," Nguyen said of their limited means. But junk food gave her access. "It had this symbolic weight to it. It was like being someone else -- the blond girl I always wanted to be."
"When I was a kid I did feel like I had to choose between being American and being Vietnamese, and for me there was almost no choice," she said, as a small silver dish of pureed potatoes arrived at the table, along with a beautiful golden beet salad with blue cheese.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/living/chi-0704260444apr27,1,561095.story?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl
So what does an article about Hostess Cupcakes and other junk food have to do with being "Asian" or being "American"?
Evidently, for this Asian-American female - a lot had to do with it - and unfortunately, this line of thinking is all too common among young, impressionable Asian-American kids.