Stealing Buddha's dinner : a memoir

I found this book very, very interesting. Her depiction and memory of early life as a Vietnamese immigrant is vivid and insightful as she recounts how she was 'different.' I enjoyed reading about the American foods and how they were prepared in the 80s.

I was disappointed by this book, which sounded promising in subject matter. It was interesting to learn a bit about Vietnamese culture, and to learn about the struggles to adapt experienced by this immigrant girl. The author's depiction of the white-bread Dutch culture of Grand Rapids was spot-on, and she clearly showed how out of place a person of color would feel in this town. However, the author didn't dig deep enough to provide a satisfying memoir. Page after page was devoted to listing the commercially prepared American foods of the time, the popular music of the 80's. She even devoted pages to summarizing the books she read as a child -- five or six pages recounting the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Good grief! It became downright boring. I would have stopped reading halfway through, but I was reading it for my book group, so I plodded on, eventually skimming through all the repetitive junk.