Stealing Buddha Dinner - Essay Example

Chapter 13 Stealing Buddha’s Dinner The author in this case goes back to her involvement in food culture by learning cooking skills from her grandmother. She adopted these specific Vietnamese values that adopt her culture. Since her grandmother was a Buddhist, she had ample knowledge of Vietnamese culture. Bich combines this Buddhist culture with her Vietnamese heritage to prepare food. This is where Buddha’s dinner is stolen. She literally steals the dinner by learning how to cook Vietnamese food (Nguyen 200).

She then shares her ideas with other members of her society from different cultures. This leads to the integration of cultures and an exchange of ideas. At this moment, she values Vietnamese culture. Through her interest in cultural cultures, she has tried to express her feelings to other members of society by creating a network. This network’s aim is to integrate the two cultures that she has experienced. This ranges from the ingredients to the ways of cooking. Since she valued Vietnamese culture, most of the foods offered had their roots in Vietnam.

Since she was in a foreign country, she was able to influence most of the Americans who wanted to change their food culture (Nguyen 150). After the writer who is the main character in the book adapts to most of the American lifestyles, she is able to blend in with the new culture. However, after a long stay in the United States, her father does not embrace Vietnamese culture. On the other hand, her mother was too busy to offer her basic social education. This made the family have different ideologies leading to the need for socialization with other immigrants.

Vietnamese food culture and values have been employed when she gets involved with her grandmother who has great Vietnamese. She seems to support the American culture at first since she loves the type of foods offered in the country. Additionally, she has learned them from her friends and most TV commercials that provided news on how to prepare new foods (Nguyen 200). The author, Bich has had different experiences with the type of food offered. The experiences include those from the Vietnamese and American food cultures.

The author tries to focus on most of the household readers who have incorporated and experienced these cultures in society. The types of foods distinguish the various types of cultures that the author adopted. In this case, the Bich adopts cooking ingredients that have Vietnamese roots. After her immigration, she has been able to adapt to the new cultures in the country. Religion has also been represented in this chapter where the author’s grandmother was a Buddhist. Her father remarries an American wife who is a catholic.

The society surrounding the writer is of the Christian religion. She finds a lot of pressure from her neighbors who confront her to join Christianity (Nguyen 10). In this chapter, she found the American culture exciting and preferred it to her Vietnamese culture. Different religious values also differentiate the two cultures. The type of food consumed by Vietnamese is different from that of the Americans. For example, there are various cooking ingredients such as meat that cannot be consumed by the Buddhist society which is mostly found in Vietnam.

The chapter continues to bring about the culture of food. There is an individualistic approach to the Western culture after Bich had settled in the United States with some of her family members. Back in Vietnam, there was a collective culture where the society would collect as a whole. Bich after getting to America finds out that everybody struggled to get his/her own food to the table. The writer has also included TV commercials to help create women’s perfection in their social activities. In this chapter, the author falls in love with the Vietnamese culture and has a lot of interest in offering the different types of cultures from Vietnam

Conclusion
Finally, the book shows that the writer values the Vietnamese culture as compared to the American culture. This is because she had spent most of her younger years in Vietnam before their immigration to the United States. Her specific food culture has also had a positive impact on adult society since most of her targets are households that spend most of their time cooking. Her family also contributed to her preference for Vietnamese culture. Her grandmother was a Buddhist and helped her come up with new values and cultures. She did not accept the American culture wholly.