Monique Truong

A friend recommended this book to me. Otherwise I doubt I would have picked it up and that would have been a shame. It's a fascinating look at synesthesia first of all. But the thing I will probably remember best about this book is how secrets affect relationships with those we are closest to.

Linda grew up in the small southern town of Boiling Springs North Carolina. She paints it as boring and backward but as she reveals her life it seems like a place full of interesting characters. Her show more best friend Kelly was awkward, shy and fat but she was also smart. Even though Linda and Kelly saw each other every day growing up they wrote letters to each other. Linda's father is a lawyer who married the daughter of the senior partner but his time away at Yale and law school hides a secret which will become important to Linda understanding who she is. Her mother is strict and undemonstrative which she may have picked up from her mother, Iris, a woman who never told a lie. Iris's younger brother, Harper, is a "confirmed bachelor" (code for gay) who is called Baby by everyone. Baby Harper and Linda love each other and he is who she tells the big secrets of her life. One of those secrets is that Linda senses a taste for every word she hears. Her own name is mint tasting. The sensations she feels when people talk to her are overwhelming and interfere with her learning school work. Kelly is also in on this secret (Linda tried to tell her mother once but that just resulted in her mother saying she would not have a crazy person in her family) and between them they work out that caffeine can help dull the sensations enough so she can excel at school.

For the first half of the book Linda seems like one person and then there is one sentence that reveals a whole other identity. I was gobsmacked; I truly did not see that coming. I really can't say more because it would give away too much. It will just have to remain a secret until you read this book. show less

Set in the 1920s and 1930s, protagonist and narrator Binh is a young gay Vietnamese cook living in Paris and working as personal chef for Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas. He had to leave French Indochina due to a failed relationship and his father’s disapproval. He tells of his life and loves in Saigon and Paris, as he observes the interactions between Stein and Toklas.

This story is told in stream-of-consciousness in a non-linear timeline with frequent unannounced shifts. show more There is not much of a plot here, but there are two stories – one of Binh and his travails, and the other of the Stein-Toklas relationship. The writing is evocative and there are several emotionally moving scenes.

The portrayal of Binh as a voice of a marginalized person works particularly well. Binh knows about French cuisine, and this knowledge of food helps him break through some of the traditional stereotypes he often encounters. I liked the elegant writing and storylines, but the structure did not work all that well for me. I think this is a case where the style occasionally gets in the way. Still, I found it well worth reading. show less

Can an Asian immigrant write the American Great Novel? If you ask any major literary establishment, the answer is always no. Great American Novels have always been written by white men, most recently Jonathan Frazen. The immigrant's story is always the immigrant's story and does not speak for the rest of America. Or at least this is the discourse.

But of course the answer to the question "Can an Asian immigrant write the great American novel?" is: yes. Monique Truong proves this in her latest show more novel Bitter in the Mouth. Truong, who was born in Saigon, indeed reinvents perhaps the most "American" genre (besides the road novel): the Southern Gothic, that genre that looks at the charms and hardships that makes life in the American South life in the American South. The literary genre is rich in examinations of race--Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, for example; or Heartbreak Hotel by Anne River Siddons. The problem with the genre however is that it has always looked at race as either Black or White. The authors are always Whites trying to make-up and/or defend the south in an act of revisionist romanticism. This South is a white, heterosexual, Christian South that is supposed to represent a truer, more real America where apple pies are baked and cups of sugar are shared and everybody is good. Karin Gillespie for example, who writes the Bottom Dollar Girls novels, or Robert Dalby who writes the Piggly Wiggly novels.

Monique Truong's novel, however, is a novel about the hidden south, the other America that was there to begin with but was always an outsider. Bitter in the Mouth is a novel about being an outsider and perhaps the main character is the biggest outsider you can find in Southern literature: Linda Hammerick, a Vietnamese adoptee who has synesthesia, that is, she tastes words. Her names makes her taste mint, God is a walnut, and mom is chocolate milk. She calls her dad "dad" and her mother DeAnne. She dances with her gay uncle. She goes to law school. With Linda, Truong has created a memorable character who is a shuffled deck of cards (long quoted passaged [about 1/2 a page], but I think this is one of the most beautiful passages in the novel]:

"I'll tell you the easy things first. I'll use simple sentences. So factual and flat, these statements will land in between us like playing cards on a table: My name is Linda Hammerick. I grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. My parents were Thomas and DeAnne. My best friend was named Kelly. I was my father's tomboy. I was my mother's baton twirler. I was my high school's valedictorian. I went far away for college and law school. I live now in New York City. I miss my great uncle Harper.
"But once these cards have been thrown down, there are bound to be distorting overlaps, the head of the Queen of Spades on the body of the King of Clubs, the Joker's bowed legs beneath a field of hearts: I grew up in (Thomas and Kelly). My parents were (valedictorian and baton twirler). My best friend was named (Harper). I was my father's (New York City). I was my mother's (college and law school). I was my high school's (tomboy). I went far away for (Thomas and DeAnne). I live now in (Boiling Springs). I miss (Linda Hammerick)."

Truong's novel is about, above all, this type of distortion. For one, it's about the way our bodies are distorted: Linda's taste distortation; the way she's a tomboy while her best friend becomes skinny and sexy; the way she looks Asian yet has a southern accent. It is as if we cannot trust our own bodies because our bodies fail, as many do in this novel, and is the cause of Linda's homecoming from New York back to Boiling Springs (via Greyhound bus). It's about how our own identities are distorted: can one be Asian with white parents? Can one belong to a white Southern community with yellow skin and slanted eyes?

Indeed the distorations in this novel is a type of disappointment--"The truth about my family was that we disappointed one another"--and the way we fail ourselves and our families (as well as how they fail us). Bitter in the Mouth is a book about our shuffled lives, how in the process of shuffling we find ourselves lost: Linda's first 7 years before the adoption is lost, her uncle's identity as a gay man is lost in familial shame, DeAnne's motives are hidden in a long history of disappointment. Bitter in the Mouth is an intricately woven family saga.

Above all, Truong does this all beautifully. Her prose is slow like a southern drawl both in a poetic way and an annoying way. The way Truong tries to let us experience Linda's synesthesia bogs down the novel, yet at the same time it slows us down to appreciate these words and their meanings. Truong not only deftly portrays her lost and spiteful characters, she paints the south that is part mythology, part history, part personal tale.

In this way, Truong not only writes an immigrant's story, she writes the Great American Story about the hidden America that has never had its story told. As Linda says at the end, "We all need a story of where we came from and how we got here. Otherwise, how could we ever put down our tender roots and stay." show less

It's distinctly a debut novel. You can tell it's written in a state of transition, whether that's from poetry or from short stories to novels. The writing comes and goes in spurts, and no single story strand ever appears long enough to pick out a delicate pattern. It's just a mass of tangled threads at the end. But somehow the underlying fabric remains steady, and you're pulled through the narrative without meaning to be.The narrator, supposedly complex, is more a collection of traits than show more an individual. It's easy, almost too easy, to slip your conception of yourself in the clothes that hang too loose on Binh (that's what he's called, even if it's not his name). His history becomes yours, his desires become yours, and slowly, your impressions of last Tuesday's dinner creep into the story, and your memories of genius become intertwined with the portrayals in the prose, and your desire for a home becomes more important than anything Truong underscores. Your deficiencies, and your strengths, give Binh a body. He is nameless, transient, easily overpowered by reality. And I'm not certain that this is a bad thing. Unintentionally or intentionally, this sublimation of the individual through the prose echoes the sublimation of the individual through language, which echoes the sublimation of the individual through colonialism. I'm leaning favorably towards this reverberation. The ease by which all these flashing threads dazzle their way across the narrative, never quite settling down or allowing another to take center stage, makes this a fast read. It's a haphazard stream-of-consciousness, and that's not redundant. It's not stream-of-consciousness in that all thoughts just expel themselves onto the page. Binh's thoughts are still sheltered. But we read them, as if we were reading his face, as he remembers desire. The memories integrate themselves into our own consciousness so subtly that we're never sure if we're recalling his home, or ours. It doesn't matter. Neither of us has one.I loved reading this. I'm not sure if I loved digesting it, though. It packs a punch, without touching. show less