Bich Minh Nguyen's Books

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Winner of the PEN/Jerard Award Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year Kiriyama Notable Book "[A] perfectly pitched and prodigiously detailed memoir." - Boston Globe As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, and in the pre-PC-era Midwest (where the Jennifers and Tiffanys reign supreme), the desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic- seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled "delicacies" of mainstream America capture her imagination. In Stealing Buddha's Dinner, the glossy branded allure of Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House Cookies becomes an ingenious metaphor for Nguyen's struggle to become a "real" American, a distinction that brings with it the dream of the perfect school lunch, burgers and Jell- O for dinner, and a visit from the Kool-Aid man. Vivid and viscerally powerful, this remarkable memoir about growing up in the 1980s introduces an original new literary voice and an entirely new spin on the classic assimilation story.

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Page Count

274

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143113038

ISBN 13

9780143113034

Short Girls

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Short Girls

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

Winner of an American Book Award Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Library Journal A novel about two Vietnamese-American sisters, longtime rivals, growing closer as they "grapplewith their upbringing, their present circumstances and their shortcomings" (Kirkus Reviews) Called "A writer to watch, a tremendous talent" by the Chicago Tribune, Bich Minh Nguyen makes her fiction debut with the deeply moving and entertaining story of two Vietnamese sisters. Aside from their petite stature, Van and Linny Luong couldn't be more different. Diligent, unassuming Van works as an immigration lawyer in the Michigan suburbs where she resides with her handsome, Chinese-American lawyer husband. Beautiful, fashionable Linny lives in Chicago and has drifted into an affair with a married man. When Van's picture-perfect marriage collapses and Linny finds herself grappling to escape her dead-end life, the long-estranged sisters are unable to confide in one another- until their eccentric inventor father calls them back home to the Vietnamese American community they fled long ago.

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Page Count

237

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101082259

ISBN 13

9781101082256

Pioneer Girl

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Pioneer Girl

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

From an award-winning author, a novel about a Vietnamese American family’s ties to The Little House on the Prairie Jobless with a PhD, Lee Lien returns home to her Chicago suburb from grad school, only to find herself contending with issues she’s evaded since college. But when her brother disappears, he leaves behind an object from their mother’s Vietnam past that stirs up a forgotten childhood dream: a gold-leaf brooch, abandoned by an American reporter in Saigon back in 1965, that might be an heirloom belonging to Laura Ingalls Wilder. As Lee explores the tenuous facts of this connection, she unearths more than expected—a trail of clues and enticements that lead her from the dusty stacks of library archives to hilarious prairie life reenactments and ultimately to San Francisco, where her findings will transform strangers’ lives as well as her own. A dazzling literary mystery about the true origins of a time-tested classic, Pioneer Girl is also the deeply moving tale of a second-generation Vietnamese daughter, the parents she struggles to honor, the missing brother she is expected to bring home—even as her discoveries yield dramatic insights that will free her to live her own life to its full potential.

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Page Count

306

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0698151372

ISBN 13

9780698151376

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Stealing Buddha's Dinner

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Page Count

276

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143113038

ISBN 13

9780143113034

Pioneer Girl

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Pioneer Girl

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

“A powerful and wholly original American saga.” —San Francisco Chronicle Bich Minh Nguyen’s previous books—the acclaimed memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner and the American Book Award–winning novel Short Girls—established her talents as a writer of keen cultural observation. In Pioneer Girl, Nguyen entwines the Asian American experience with the escapist pleasures of literature, in a dazzling mystery about the origins of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic Little House on the Prairie. Lee Lien has long dodged her Vietnamese family’s rigid expectations by immersing herself in books. But now, jobless with a PhD in literature, she is back at home, working in her family’s restaurant under her mother’s hypercritical gaze—until an heirloom from their past sends Lee on a search for clues that may lead back to Wilder herself, transforming strangers’ lives as well as her own.

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Page Count

306

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143126229

ISBN 13

9780143126225

Short Girls

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Short Girls

A Novel

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Page Count

237

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101082259

ISBN 13

9781101082256

Short Girls

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

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Short Girls

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

This is a wry, involving story of estranged Vietnamese-American sisters, the secrets that separate them, and the cultural and personal history that binds them together.

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Page Count

408

Published Date

ISBN 10

1444800973

ISBN 13

9781444800975

Book's by Bich Minh Nguyen

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Short Girls

Short Girls

Pioneer Girl

Pioneer Girl

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Pioneer Girl

Pioneer Girl

Short Girls

Short Girls

Short Girls

Short Girls

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