Short Girls
a novel
published by Viking Penguin
one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2009
"This absorbing novel about two sisters is like a prism reflecting essential questions in a variety of subtle, sharp, glistening ways: What makes a family? A home? An American? Without sentimentality, Nguyen takes on these questions bravely and with graceful intelligence." -- Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle
Find Short Girls online at:
Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Powell's / Borders / IndieBound
Audio: AudioBookStand and Amazon
"A dazzling and intricate portrait of two sisters whose lives, for very different reasons, are in turmoil. I love how deftly Nguyen conjures up her characters, and how much she knows about the world of work and about the complex loyalties that bind families and immigrant communities together. Best of all is her fluent, eloquent, intimate prose that carries the reader effortlessly into both the past and the future." -- Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street and Banishing Verona
"Short Girls is an exceptional debut, funny, insightful and literary, with lots to mull over after you put it down." -- Conan Putnam, Chicago Tribune
"Van and Linny Luong enact the stereotypical roles of studious, straight-A sister and pretty, popular slacker. The daughters of Vietnamese refugees living in Michigan, the women drift apart as Van pursues a law career and marries a picture-perfect Chinese American classmate. Linny drops out of college, ending up in Chicago working for a food-preparation company. When their father announces that he has finally gained U.S. citizenship, they join forces to give him a party and smooth his participation on a reality TV show where he will demonstrate his inventions, the 'Luong Arm,' the 'Luong Eye,' and the 'Luong Wall'--objects that help short people, like his daughters, cope in a world of much taller individuals. As the narrative cuts back and forth between Van and Linny, examining their failed relationships with each other and their male partners, this lovely first novel becomes much more-a depiction of immigrant culture in which everyone is a short person trying to measure up to the United States. Verdict: Fans of Nguyen's acclaimed memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, will want to read her fiction debut. This should also appeal to readers of Asian American fiction. Highly recommended." -- Library Journal (starred review)
"[A] detailed character study of second-generation sisters who find themselves more anchored by their Vietnamese heritage than they had realized. … Nguyen's novel is clever and lively, a fine update to a familiar setup.” -- Publisher’s Weekly
"Divergent Vietnamese-American sisters grapple with their upbringing, their present circumstances and their shortcomings. Debut novelist Nguyen integrates many of the themes found in her immigration memoir (Stealing Buddha's Dinner, 2007), while solidly demonstrating a flair for fictional composition. The book centers on quarrelsome siblings Van and Linny, who find themselves at emotional and cultural crossroads as the first generation of their family to be raised in America. . . . The family's ambitious patriarch is Dinh Luong, a widower and amateur inventor whose most useful invention, a 'Luong Arm' designed to extend the reach of short people, sharpens his daughters' sense of inadequacy. As the sisters help their father prepare for a reality show called 'Tomorrow's Great Inventor,' they find themselves learning significantly more about themselves, their heritage andthe art of self-invention. . . . A compassionate family drama that attacks emotional and generational unrest with an optimistic thesis--life goes on." -- Kirkus Reviews
"More sad than funny, more real than lightweight, Nguyen's story offers its characters not revenge, redemption or even success, but acceptance. Even in the country of tall people, short will have to be good enough." -- Marion Winik, Los Angeles Times
"Tradition, unspoken truths and height are a few of the many things that the Vietnamese sisters struggle with in Short Girls, the beautiful debut novel by Bich Minh Nguyen. . . . [W]ith haunting detail . . . Nguyen describes her characters and the towns they live in expertly, giving the reader an accurate vision of who they are and where the story takes place. It's a story filled with Vietnamese inheritance and yet could be about any family, of any ethnicity. Strapped with the duty of being good daughters to their father, Van and Linny find their way to being true to themselves without completely negating their heritage. It's a lovely story, rich with realization and quiet acceptance." -- Examiner.com
"Nguyen's debut novel is a poignant look at immigrants and their children finding their identity as Americans." -- People magazine
“Nguyen made a splash with her memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, and this, her first novel, has been much anticipated—with good reason. . . . Her characters are stubborn, selfish, and often paralyzed with inaction, but also warm, dutiful and loving, and this careful balance makes them incredibly real and sympathetic. But the real star is the prose itself, which is succinct, efficient and peppered with perffeclty chosen details that make each scene come alive.” -- Rebecca Shapiro, BookPage
"Nguyen offers a tender dissection of Asian American family life - the isolation that comes from being separated from relatives and deprived of the comforts of belonging to a larger culture. She wields the theme of shortness with great subtlety and nuance, not only mining it for comedy but also using it as a metaphor for the many ways we feel out of place in the world, which is no mean feat." -- Grace Park, San Francisco Chronicle
"Nguyen enriches her first novel with such incisive personal and cultural observations." -- Laura Impellizzeri, AP (Associated Press)
"During the several months in which the book's central events occur, the sisters, longtime rivals, grow closer when...Linny confides that she has a married lover and Van an overbearing, distant husband. Their dilemmas provide the framework for larger concerns, among them how to remain true to their family, community and ethnic heritage when American life pulls the opposite way....[T]he sisters learn not only who they are, but where geographically, psychologically and emotionally they belong....Bich Minh Nguyen's lovely, loving tale of Midwestern immigrant life is finally a deeply American book about place and placelessness. -- Anthony Bukoski, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Stealing Buddha's
Dinner
The 2009-2010 Great Michigan Read / Winner of the PEN/Jerard Award / A Chicago Tribune Best Book of 2007 / Kiriyama Prize Notable Book / Asian American Literature Award Finalist / BookSense pick
Find Stealing Buddha's Dinner online at:
Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Borders / IndieBound / Powell's Books
Audio: AudioBookStand and Amazon
"A charming memoir. . . . Her prose is engaging, precise, compact."
- Ben Fong-Torres, The New York Times Book Review
"[D]eftly crafted . . . Far from being a memoir of what could be described as fitting into the kitschy ethnic-lit genre, her story is at once personal and broad, about one Vietnamese refugee navigating U.S. culture as well as an exploration of identity. . . . [S]he pays equal attention to the rhythm and poignancy of language to build her story as she does the circumstances into which she was born." -- Michael Standaert, Los Angeles Times
"The author's prose is lovely and her imagery fresh. And in her recreation of a world populated by Family Ties [and] Ritz crackers . . . she has captured the 1980s with perfection. . . . This debut suggests she's a writer to watch." -- Kirkus Reviews
"[A] perfectly pitched and prodigiously detailed memoir." -- Boston Globe
"The immigrant's tale is a perpetually renewing source, at once enduring and changing--creating new voices, new details and new experiences while forming its own tradition. Where would we be without Saul Bellow's cocky but anxious Augie March, or Philip Roth's neurosis-packed Portnoy's Complaint? Russians, Italians, Hispanics and Somalis all have contributed their first-generation protagonists -- mixtures of energy and anxiety, shame and pride, longing and resistance.
Bich Minh Nguyen, a Vietnamese woman who came of age in super-white, super-conservative Grand Rapids, Mich., in the 1980s, takes her place among them with her memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner. At the same time, she brings a new and totally individual fixation into the mix: for Roth, America is a blonde; for Nguyen, it's a Hostess cupcake.
Nguyen brings back moments and sensations with such vivid clarity that readers will find themselves similarly jolted back in time. She's a sensuous writer--colors and textures weave together in her work to create a living fabric. This book should be bought and read anytime your soul hungers for bright language and close observation."
- Emily Carter Roiphe, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"As Bich Minh Nguyen relates in her bittersweet first book, the memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner, food becomes part of her yearning for Americanness, for normalcy. If she eats what's on TV, she'll fit in, even as she occasionally laments the loss of her mother tongue. It's this premise that makes the book relevant not only to anyone who's ever lusted after the perfect snack, but anyone who's ever felt different." -- Michael Rose, San Francisco Chronicle
"It seems as though everyone has written a memoir by now, but Stealing Buddha's Dinner is one of the few that's well worth reading. . . . Her writing is so detailed that the era--the fashions, the music, hairstyles--comes alive. She also uses food to indicate the divide she feels between herself, her family, and the larger 'American' group she longs to be a part of. . . . [S]he tells the tale so well that you just want to keep remembering this childhood with her. This is a funny, touching book from a promising young writer. . . . Stealing Buddha's Dinner is original and fresh." -- BUST Magazine
"At once sad and funny, full of brass, energy, and startling insights, is a charmer of a memoir. Bich Nguyen's story ranges from the pleasures of popular culture to the richness of personal history, from American fast foods to traditional Vietnamese fare. It is an irresistable tale." -- Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Origin, Crescent and The Language of Baklava
"Nguyen is a gifted storyteller who doles out humor and hurt in equal portions as she fleshes out the plight of the immigrant. . . . This memoir, which is also a tribute to 'all the bad food, fashion, and hair of the deep 1980s,' feels vivid, true, and even nostalgic." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor
"Her prose effortlessly pulls readers into her worlds. Her typical and not-so-typical childhood experiences give her story a universal flavor." -- Carole Memmott, USA Today
“Frank, tender, unsettling, Bich Minh Nguyen moves the reader with each event and image. Bich's grandparents ‘gathered up the family and fled Vietnam to start over on the other side of the world’ in 1975. Her own and her family’s subtle and brutal collisions in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are rendered true and palpable by the writer’s candid imagination. In fiction and nonfiction, the reality of a character's life lies in how it is experienced. Nguyen's immigrant childhood resonates, as she captures the experience of two cultures’ clashing smells, religions, hair styles, clothes, habits, and, especially, foods. As she writes it, her grandmother’s gathering toadstools in their backyard garden sets them apart from their neighbors absolutely but also ineffably. America's foundational story is the immigrant’s tale, and, with its new citizens, the country continuously remakes itself. Similarly, Nguyen's unique writerly vision, her innovative and pungent voice, reinvents and renews this venerable theme." -- Lynne Tillman, judges' citation for the PEN/Jerard Award
"Stealing Buddha's Dinner is an irresistible memoir of assimilation, compassion, family, and food. Who would have thought that SpaghettiOs, Nestlé Quik, and Pringles could seem as wonderfully exotic to a Vietnamese refugee as shrimp curry and spring rolls seem to the average Midwesterner, but that's part of the tasty surprise of this wonderful debut." -- Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still and editor of Brevity