2008 Woodie Awards
Truong gives 'Lit Week' a pinch of salt
By James Queally
Issue date: 12/5/07 Section: Entertainment
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Reading to a packed house in the Library Auditorium, Truong presented several selections from her critically acclaimed novel. "The Book of Salt" chronicles the trials of Binh, a Vietnamese cook under the employ of famed lesbian literary couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Throughout the book, Binh constantly tries to reconcile with his tormented past in Vietnam while touring the beautiful rural sections of France with his "mesdames."
"'The Book of Salt' is a parable for our beginnings, middles and ends," Susan Pedersen, junior English major, said as she welcomed Truong to the auditorium stage.
Sporting an all-black outfit that prominently displayed her ties to the artist's colony that is Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, N.Y, Truong took the stage and presented a selection from chapter 13 of "The Book of Salt." In this portion of the novel, Binh deals with his social stature in relation to Toklas and Stein's dogs, and copes with his morning duties after a long night of drinking with the local farmers.
"We servants speak the same language, learned in the backrooms of houses and spoken in the front rooms on occasions such as these," Binh narrates as he recalls confronting Toklas while hung over.
Truong was inspired to write "The Book of Salt" after reading "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" in which she discovered that Toklas and Stein employed Indo-Chinese men as cooks at their French hideaway. The author felt previous depictions of Indo-Chinese cooks stigmatized them as simple-minded alcoholics, while Truong felt there was much more to say about their characters.
"Part of the project of writing the novel was to not leave them as I found them," Truong said.
"So now we're going to make a radical shift," Truong said as she introduced her second piece of fiction, the introductory scene to her latest novel, "Bitter in the Mouth."
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