The Book of Salt serves up a wholly original take on Paris in the 1930s through the eyes of Binh, the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Viewing his famous mesdames and their entourage from the kitchen of their rue de Fleurus home, Binh observes their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world. In a mesmerizing tale of yearning and betrayal, Monique Truong explores Paris from the salons of its artists to the dark nightlife of its outsiders and exiles. She takes us back to Binh's youthful servitude in Saigon under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his brief, fateful encounters in Paris with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of its publication, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network is proud to release a newly updated version of Watermark, the seminal anthology of Vietnamese American literature. Contextualized by a new foreword from Isabelle Thuy Pelaud and seasoned with new voices, Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition takes its place as a generational work of eclectic and essential voices. Edited by Barbara Tran, Monique Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi, this updated edition of Watermark continues to elevate Vietnamese American literature, whose renaissance it ushered in upon its first publication. Again, some of the most innovative contemporary Vietnamese American writers, such as Linh Dinh, Andrew Lam, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Dao Strom, explore thematic and stylistic territory previously overlooked in other collections, which have traditionally focused on war. New voices such as Anvi Hoang, Vinh Nguyen, and Vi Khi Nao are included in this new edition, raising the number of pieces from forty to fifty-two. Watermark lifts all constraints, leaving the works to reset the boundaries for themselves. And they do-using poetry, fiction, and experimental forms to venture further into the fringes of the Vietnamese American psyche. A work equal measures foundational and pathbreaking, now available again and expanded for a new generation of readers-an essential collection not to be missed.

In a compelling novel that takes the reader on a strange journey from Indochina to Paris, the Vietnamese cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas reveals his own fascinating story-Paris, 1934. Binh has accompanied his employers to the station for their departure to America. His own destination is unclear: will he go with his 'Mesdames', stay in France, or return to his native Vietnam? Binh fled his homeland in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the personal cook at the famous apartment on the rue de Fleurs. Binh is a lost soul, an exile and an alien, a man of musings, memories and possibly lies- Tastes, oceans, sweat, tears - The Book of Salt is a an inspired novel about food and exile, love and betrayal.

"Bitter in the Mouth" is a brilliant, virtuosic novel about a young woman's search for identity and the true meaning of family.
""What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two"" are the prophetic last words that Linda Hammerick's grandmother says to her. Growing up in small-town North Carolina in the 1970s and '80s, Linda already knows that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. She can "taste" words. In this and in other ways, her body is a mystery to her. Linda's awkward girlhood is nonetheless enlivened and emboldened by her dancing great-uncle Harper, and Kelly, her letter-writing best friend. Linda makes her way north to college and then to New York City, trying her best to leave her past behind her like "a pair of shoes that no longer fit." But when a family tragedy compels her to return home, Linda uncovers the startling secrets of her past. Monique Truong's acclaimed novel questions our assumptions about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected to and disconnected from our bodies, our histories, ourselves.
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