VietnamEazy: A Novel About Mothers, Daughters and Food

by Trami Nguyen Cron

Like Viet Thanh Nguyen’s acclaimed The Sympathizer, VietnamEazy captures with startling honesty and detail the dizzying dislocation that so many Vietnamese arrivals in the United States have experienced and, like Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, explores the age-old mysteries of the mother-daughter relationship. It tells the story of Kieu, a Vietnamese-American woman, and her quest for success on a TV cooking show, introducing the intoxicating allure of Vietnamese food to a general audience, interwoven with the haunting, sorrowful tale of her family and upbringing. This is a universal tale of redemption that mothers and daughters can read together and discuss, preferably over a steaming bowl of pho.

Kieu is an every-woman trying to navigate challenges that plague so many of us — a difficult mother who shows her love in all the wrong ways, a mix of insecurity and uneasy pride when it comes to her passion in life, bringing traditional Vietnamese cooking to the U.S. with the twist of doing so with simple recipes featuring ingredients easy to find. When to her astonishment she is chosen to compete in the reality-TV cooking program 'Sliced and Diced,' famously cutthroat and competitive, she embarks on a journey of personal discovery that will take her in surprising new directions - leaving her in the end with no easy answers, but a deeper sense of connection to her mother and grandmother and to the land of her birth. Along the way Cron, a gifted cook, brings alive the delectable flavors and textures of Vietnamese food. Each of the eight chapters starts with a recipe, which the story of the chapter then evokes in vivid, unforgettable detail, and together the eight recipes of the book add up to an entire feast - literally, an epic meal much like that served to Vietnamese Emperors, and also figuratively, a feast of story-telling.

Genres: Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 6, 2016

About the author

Trami Nguyen Cron was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and when she was eight years old left Vietnam with her family for France. Three years later, they settled in the United States.

Trami, a longtime resident of Northern California, is the founder of Chopsticks Alley, an international foodie group promoting restaurants and hosting events for members while raising funds to support homeless kids in the Silicon Valley. She is a successful entrepreneur, having started numerous businesses in Northern California, and serves as the philanthropy director for the Miss Vietnam of Northern California Intercollegiate Pageant.

When asked about why she wanted to author a book about the Vietnamese experience, Trami responded, “I wanted to write about all that is beautiful and unique about Vietnam from its culture to its food. I want to share stories about the people of Vietnam that have nothing to do with the Vietnam War.”

Reviews

[Carol N · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished reading this charmingly written novel that looks at the Vietnamese culture, a family’s idiosyncrasies, and, of course, the importance of food/cooking to the Vietnamese culture. In this book the author conveys how the lives of three generations of women are intertwined as each attempts to adapt to the challenges between their two worlds. It explores the age-old mystery of a “mother-daughter” relationship while the main character, Kieu, is on her quest for a successful television cooking show that will introduce the allure of Vietnamese food to the American audience.

It will make you chuckle, perhaps even make you cry, but most importantly, it will make you stop and remember, no matter your age or culture, it is important to continue to dream and spread your wings

[Abby Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love me a cheesy book!! (sadly there was no real cheese in this book)

[Ngoc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved all of the family history, phrases in Vietnamese, explanations of cultural differences and mannerisms, and women's role and expectations in Vietnam. Kieu's relationship with her husband is lacking a good reflective explanation though.

[oshizu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every chapter of this #ownvoices novel opens with a recipe for a Vietnamese dish then alternates between (1) flashbacks of the (fictional) protagonist's childhood in Vietnam, flight to France, and later years in the US and (2) her participation in an episode of a reality TV cooking competition.

[Danny Knobler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick, fun read from a new author who,gives insight into both Vietnamese culture and the Vietnamese immigrant experience. She even includes a few recipes.

[ren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel somewhat guilty giving this book two stars... I probably would've given it a better rating if it were categorized as a memoir - perhaps something akin to Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, which would make up for the stories-within-a-story format that has been hectically executed. To me, the stories about the women in Kieu's life are interesting and to an extent, informative with regards to Vietnamese culture, but to whom she's telling these stories is a bit unclear to me. Sure, it's dedicated to her family, but if her intended audience is the Vietnamese community, the detailed explanations about Vietnamese customs seemed a bit redundant. If her intended audience is Vietnamese immigrants and/or Western readers who don't know much about Vietnamese culture, then I fail to see what she's trying to accomplish. She presents not only too intricate details about the recipes featured, but also stories after stories loaded with new information both culturally and linguistically, tied together through the theme of "cultural norms," yet this theme isn't revisited at the end of the novel, or at least, not resolved in a satisfactory way. As a Vietnamese child who struggles with C-PTSD whose family who actually isn't as bad as Kieu's, the resolution between Kieu and her mother is unconvincing to me, because of how quickly her mother admits to "feeling not enough," and especially how there's little to no build up to that moment of reconciliation between Kieu and her mother. It doesn't feel credible. Yes, Kieu was changed after the competition, but what about her mother? Something must have happened that made her feel like telling the truth to Kieu. Of course, Kieu is telling her own story, and everyone has a different story. However, with the emotional realism embedded in VietnamEazy, I truly expected a more gradual and satisfactory process of reconciliation between Kieu and her mother. In other words, I want it to be more realistic.

One more detail about the narrative that doesn't sit well with me is the frequency at which Vietnamese culture has been generalized in here. In every chapter, Kieu tells a story or two about her own experiences, from which she makes sweeping generalizations about Vietnamese cultural norms and values. While I'm not objecting to her claims as they're generally true, the way Kieu keeps saying "in Vietnamese culture you must do this" and "if you don't do this in Vietnamese culture you'll be ostracized by the entire community" makes the book read like a Vietnamese culture 101, in a scary way. I feel like Kieu's acting as the spokesperson for Vietnamese culture or something. Hence, this line towards the end is especially unsettling to me: "Her parenting might have violated every rule in the book by contemporary, Western standards, yet she had done what she could, with all the heart and soul she could muster, and she had helped prepare me for my extraordinary life." Because of the "Vietnamese culture representative" vibe that Kieu emits throughout the book, this sentence reads like a collective forgiving from all Vietnamese children who have been traumatized by their parents/family/culture. Because hey, we turned out fine, didn't we? Just a couple of panic attacks and trauma flashbacks every once in a while. All that pain was definitely an effective way to help us "prepare" for the future!

On a more positive note, I definitely enjoyed reading the writing style. It's a bit corny at times, but that's understandable for this type of novel. I like the linguistic and cultural tidbits about Vietnamese pronouns and idioms. The novel is, in general, easy to read, and very informative.

[Susan Inman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book confused me. Somehow I went into it thinking it was a memoir. You can hardly blame me. It's structured like a memoir. It reads like a memoir with a mixture of reminiscences and family stories in the context of a modern plot line. There are what look like family photos at the beginnings of chapters. I was at least half way through when I realized that there were no captions under the family photos. These were not photos of the characters in the book. Then I went back and looked at the title again. "A novel about ..." It's right there in the title. This was not a memoir, but in fact a work of fiction. Sigh. So, what did I think about it as a novel? I liked it. I really liked the reality competition cooking show. I watch a lot of those shows and it was fun to imagine one from the viewpoint of one of the contestants with all the inside scoop included. It was short, as novels go. The main character's marriage history was confusing. I was never clear on the number of times she had been married and what may have happened to end her marriage(s). I was also unclear on some of her travels around the world. I get how she made her way to Paris. But what brought her to the US. And why did she leave her grandmother in Paris? So, even as a novel, there were parts that confused me. The cultural aspects of being a modern Vietnamese American with traditional Vietnamese parents was interesting. The connection of food with family and tradition was well done. Overall, I liked it, but feel that there are too many flaws to give it 4 stars.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I enjoyed learning a bit about the food and culture of Vietnam in this novel by Trami Nguyen Cron, overall I didn't like the book much.
The story is about a Vietnamese-American woman who has entered a reality television cooking contest in hopes of hosting her own cooking show. This part of the story is the backdrop to learning about her family history in Vietnam after the war.
The book also attempts to make this a mother-daughter story, but it falls short of being believable. In explaining about the culture she comes from, Kieu, the protagonist, provides examples of her mother's critical nature. Kieu complains that her mother does not love her, but never attributes her mother's behavior to her own upbringing. Then, at the end, suddenly Kieu feels compelled to confront her mother about the emotional distance between them, and the mother confesses her own self-doubts, leaving Kieu feeling compassion rather than confusion and anger. All in two pages. This anti-climatic resolution felt much too convenient.
The parts of the book that involved the cooking show and Kieu's choices of dishes to prepare was written better than the mother-daughter portions, and the choices made by family members in the midst of war and its aftermath helped me understand the culture which influenced Kieu. It seemed odd that the character didn't apply the insight that she shared with the reader.

[Lorena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book when visiting the publisher, and after reading through a solid chunk of during my stay, I was encouraged to take it home with me.

I am a such a sucker for books that speak deeply of food, and endcap the chapter with a recipe for a dish we've now formed a relationship with. Vietnameazy prefaces the chapters with the recipes, and takes us along for the journey of exploring our protagonist, Kieu's, relationship with the dish and why she, and by extension the reader, should care about it. This is all framed by a cooking show competition, which provides a very logical structure for the frank discussion of food.

Interwoven with memories of food, our protagonist frequently reflects on her relationship with her mother, and how these have shaped her sense of self and cultural identity. It's a deep dive into specific aspects of vietnamese culture, and how those ultimately help shape Kieu as an adult living in the US.

It's difficult for me to say that this is a 'feel-good' book, though I suspect that interpretation will vary based on the readers own experience and cultural nuances. It is nonetheless a good read, and I hope to find more books like it in the future. :)

[Eric Dye · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun book to read as casual reading over the holidays. The descriptions of Vietnamese
Food were really good, and some of the reality TV stuff was fun. Though I’m not sure I love the memoir style done as a novel - I kind of kept wanting it to be real, but then had to remind myself it wasn’t. But overall it was a fun read.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Her parenting might have violated every rule in the book by contemporary, Western standards, yet she had done what she could, with all the heart and soul she could muster, and she had helped prepare me for my extraordinary life."

[Quiltyknitwit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has its charming and poignant moments, but jumps around in time and careens from topic to topic.

[Kway · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story was beautiful, the food descriptions were exact and mouth watering. I want to re-read this, cry some more, and absorb all the culture, again and again.

[Kakali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lighthearted novel switching between Vietnamese recipes by the protagonist in a high strung cooking contest show, and flashbacks to a past in Vietnam steeped in culture, dysfunction and confusion.

[Yuka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the recipes and the storyline.