Monique Truong is a writer from Vietnam. When she was six years old, her hometown was involved in the Vietnam War, so her family left to live in America as refugees. From her personal experience, she writes about immigrants in her story “The book of Salt” in which the main character Binh a man from the Vietnam moved to France.She describes how he struggled with the foreign language, and his attempt to find a lover in France. Her book gives a lot detail about this first-generation immigration life of a Vietnamese man. Binh became a French cook who worked at different restaurants with little knowledge of the French language, but he tells his older brother everything was very good in Paris when, in reality, it wasn’t. He worked at learning French and always thought about how his brother taught him how to speak this language and how to become a French cook. In the book,Binh remembered all the stories from his hometown in Vietnam, and one in particular stood out in his mind. Binh’s brother helped him get a job at Governor-General’s house to work as a cook and recounted this experience by saying, “Years ago when I had just joined the Governor-General’s household, Anh Minh told me that the chauffeur was the first son of a rich merchant, had studied in Paris,returned to Vietnam to see his father smoke away all of the family’s fortune in puffs of opium, lost his automobile to a gambling debt” (Truong, 41). This quotation shows how he became a French cook, and why he eventually traveled overseas to Paris.
Vietnam was colonized by the French, when Binh was a young boy and since his old brother worked at Governor-General’s house for a French cook, Binh too became a French cook. After his experience in this restaurant, Binh left his hometown to live in Paris. No matter how far away he was from his hometown,however, he always thought about Vietnam. In Paris, he could think his family and childhood through sweet memories that made him so happy. He missed his hometown and his family—especially his older brother Anh Minh. Since Binh moved out of the country, no one could help him, yet he thought about his brother a lot. Without any one’s help, he finally got an interview from an American family in France to become their personal chef. The father of the house hold said to Binh before the interview, “Well, are you coming in with me, or shall we conduct our interview here in the doorway?” (Truong, 40). Binh needed a job to make a living, so he was excited to later receive this job position to work in Paris as a cook in the Gertrude Stein’s kitchen. Despite this new career, however, Binh was lonely as he faced many problems in Paris, such as the language barrier and how to fit into society.
In this story, a Vietnamese man left his hometown to travel overseas in search of a new future, but realized that this endeavor was more difficult than anticipated. Truong’s story makes me think of many Chinese students who was study and work hard in oversea, After graduation no jobs available, but they trying to find job to support themselves, and therefore find a job in America, as a first-generation immigrant person as bitter taste experience. Truong’s story,“The Book of Salt”, is a perfect representation of the struggles an immigrant might face and how it impacts his or her life. In this particular story, the immigrant Binh became a cook in France, yet he faced several obstacles to start live in this foreign country. In my opinion, the salt represents pain and tears.Since Binh’s life was so difficult, he used sweet memories stored in his mind to remember his hometown at any time, which made him happy.
