{"product_id":"book-apia","title":"Stealing Buddha's Dinner","description":"Beginning with her family’s harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest. Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen’s desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food – Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies. More exotic-seeming than her Buddhist grandmother’s traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled “delicacies” of mainstream America become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to become a “real” American. Stealing Buddha’s Dinner is also a portrayal of a diverse family: Nguyen’s hardworking, hard-partying father; pretty sister; wise and nurturing grandmother; and Rosa, her Latina stepmother. And there is the mystery of Nguyen’s birth mother, unveiled movingly over the course of the book. Nostalgic and candid, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner is a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for. “Her typical and not-so-typical childhood experiences give her story a universal flavor.” – USA Today “Beautifully written...[Nguyen] is fearless in asserting the specificities of memories culled from early childhood and is, herself, an appealing character on the page...A writer to watch.” – Chicago Tribune “Perfectly pitched and prodigiously detailed.” – The Boston Globe","brand":"Brilliance Audio","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49391473262896,"sku":"BDapia","price":35.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio CD [10]","offer_id":49391473295664,"sku":"10apia","price":28.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/apia-Square-cover.jpg?v=1773797933","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-apia","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}