Publishers Weekly
01/08/2024
In this engrossing and evocative debut memoir, Nguon recounts how her mother’s recipes sustained her family through poverty and genocidal violence. Raised in a middle-class, half Vietnamese family in Battambang, Cambodia, in the 1960s, Nguon learned to cook Khmer food by shadowing her mother, whom she affectionately called “Mae.” In 1970, as the Vietnam War spilled over Cambodia’s borders and communist revolutionary Pol Pot began his rise to power, Nguon and her siblings fled to Saigon, leaving their mother and oldest brother behind to “sort out the family’s affairs.” Five years later, after the death of her mother and most of her siblings, Nguon escaped Saigon with her boyfriend, Chan, and bounced around various refugee camps in Thailand, where she worked as bartender, brothel cook, medical assistant, and silkweaver. Eventually, Nguon returned to Cambodia to open the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center, where she continues to provide food and education to Khmer women. Throughout, Nguon interweaves the hardships she endured with her favorite recipes and the memories attached to them, offering readers evocative glimpses of the bursts of light that sustained her through long stretches of harrowing darkness. This haunting yet hopeful account will appeal to foodies and history buffs alike. Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
I’ve never read a book that made me weep, wince, laugh out loud, and rejoice like Slow Noodles. In Chantha Nguon’s harrowing, wise, and fiercely feminist memoir, cooking is a language—of love, remembrance, and rebellion—and stories are nourishment." —Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
"A heart-lifting story of radiant compassion, Slow Noodles reminds us of a life-affirming truth: Even when all seems lost, who we most essentially are, like what we most unerringly love, somehow remains. We have never needed this beautiful book more.”—Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations
“With hauntingly vivid and often surprisingly beautiful language and imagery, Slow Noodles tells an astonishing story of life—persistent, miraculous life—in a harrowing era. I’ll never forget it.” —Mary Laura Philpott, author of Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives
“A testament to the strength of women in times of war, a recipe book of memories, and a lesson in rebuilding after destruction, this memoir is a reminder that the world has ended many times over in different places, and that our teachers in survival walk among us every day.” —Thi Bui, bestselling author of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
“Chantha Nguon connects to the joy of the sight, scent, taste, texture, and even sound of food, and when there is no food to eat she connects to the memory of food. In this potent narrative of unbreakable, inviolable, female power, each recipe is an act of grace, transformation, resistance, and reclamation.” —Alice Randall, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the NAACP Image Award for Soul Food Love
"Not only the remarkable story of Chantha Nguon’s life, Slow Noodles is a beautiful glimpse into the hearts of women as they find each other over food.”—Lisa Donovan, author of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.
“It is rare that a memoir and the meals it recounts truly depend on each other, each intrinsic to the other. Yet that is the case in Slow Noodles, where recipes reinforce the incredible, poignant, difficult, and often joyous tale of Chantha Nguon's survival. This book tells a story that must be heard, and offers the tastes of an extraordinary life.” —Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal and The Everlasting Meal Cookbook
"Lyrical and visceral, perfumed by charcoal fires and fish paste, this call and response between narrative and cookbook shows us all how time in the kitchen can restore. Slow Noodles is food and life writing at its most profound."—John T. Edge, host of TrueSouth and author of The Potlikker Papers
“Achingly beautiful. Nguon explores how food fuels love, preserves history, restores losses, heals trauma, and binds people and cultures together. This is a work of synesthesia. The flavors described in these pages become so potent that they transform into colors that can be seen, textures that can be felt, and music that can be heard. I have read many food memoirs but none have moved me, sated me, inspired and informed me like Slow Noodles.” —Amanda Little, author of The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World
Named a Most Anticipated Book of Winter/2024 by San Francisco Chronicle, Reader's Digest, Parade, Publishers Weekly, and Zibby Mag The Best (and Most Anticipated) Nonfiction Books of 2024, So Far - Elle “Best Books to Read in 2024” - PEOPLE.com
“[B]y turns, heart-wrenching, inspiring, harrowing, and mouthwatering… Slow Noodles is a rare gem of a story, gorgeously written, humble and stirring, and packed with tempting recipes. Shelf Talker: This memoir of food, family, feminism, and Cambodian history, which includes enticing cookbook-quality recipes, is breathtaking in its emotional resonance and lovely writing.”—Shelf Awareness
“Slow Noodles is a poignant memoir meets cookbook… This book is an act of resistance and reclamation filled with lyrical prose.”—Parade
“Chantha Nguon reclaims the love and culture she lost with a beautiful collection of recipes knitted together with her personal story.”—Reader's Digest
“[A]n evocative, haunting memoir… those who dive in will find it a remarkable and important piece of work. A moving book that mixes horror and hope, disaster and good food, creating a poignant, fascinating read.”—Kirkus Reviews
"An engrossing and evocative debut memoir... Nguon interweaves the hardships she endured with her favorite recipes and the memories attached to them, offering readers evocative glimpses of the bursts of light that sustained her through long stretches of harrowing darkness. This haunting yet hopeful account will appeal to foodies and history buffs alike.”—Publishers Weekly
“Heartbreaking, exquisitely told.”—Book Page (starred review)
“Demonstrating an exceptional sensitivity to the cultural, social, and political significance of food… this memoir is also a redemptive homecoming to parts of Cambodian history still fresh in many minds and a meditation on the beginnings of a new Cambodia.”—Booklist
“Nguon’s memoir about being a Cambodian refugee surviving a genocide to discovering hope and faith through her mother’s recipes will move you to tears. It’s not all down notes though and the story beams with hope, pride, and determination.”—Debutiful
“[A] gorgeous… deeply personal memoir... Interwoven with recipes and lists of ingredients, Nguon’s heart-rending writing reinforces the joy and agony of her core thesis: ‘The past never goes away.’”—Elle
“Nguon’s story is heart-wrenching, but her strength and ferocity shine through every page of Slow Noodles.”—Chapter 16
“The book is not only an impactful memoir of an extraordinary woman but a human-centered take on an era that has largely been defined by a lack of humanity.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Food is at the heart of this poignant memoir of war and displacement—food prepared, food shared, food longed for... a heart-shattering read, illuminating the atrocities and cruelty of war but also the strength of those who live through it.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Lyrical, harrowing, and fiercely feminist, Chantha Nguon’s Slow Noodles is the gripping story of family, survival and food that blends poetic remembrances with 22 unique recipes.”—Southern Review of Books
“With such descriptions and a strong sense of place, Nguon expertly captures the bittersweet feeling of her memories and makes Slow Noodles a moving reflection.”—Eater.com
"You will never read another food-inspired memoir like Slow Noodles."—BookReporter
"Her story is one of perseverance and resilience... reminding me (and readers) that the Cambodian diaspora is not a monolith and that we all have stories to tell."—Northwest Asian Weekly
Library Journal
★ 03/29/2024
Cambodian activist Nguon, assisted by writer and public radio producer Green, shares her family recipes as she reflects on the grief, hunger, and rootlessness she experienced after Pol Pot's ascension to power. Though Nguon, the daughter of a Cambodian father and a Vietnamese mother, enjoyed a relatively prosperous early childhood, her family's peace was shattered by racially motivated violence, which intensified and forced them to flee to Saigon in 1975. In the ensuing years, she experienced the crushing deaths of her mother and siblings, the terror of living under North Vietnamese rule, and despair at losing her home and livelihood. She later left Vietnam, spending years in Thai refugee camps, only to be unceremoniously returned to Cambodia. Even then, Nguon survived and eventually opened a center to provide Khmer women with employment, job training, and medical care. Throughout this time, she was sustained by memories of her family's recipes, which embodied the love, hard work, and resilience of her family and her community. Balancing bitter and sweet, her recipes and their names range from humorous (Silken Rebellion Fish Fry) to touching (Banh Sung of Forgiveness). VERDICT A stunning memoir, spiced with delectable and occasionally devastating recipes. This is unmissable.—Sarah Hashimoto
FEBRUARY 2024 - AudioFile
Clara Kim narrates her mother's memoir. The initial chapters describe Nguon's early years in Cambodia, which were filled with the abundance of her mother's gifted cooking and the love of her older siblings. Interspersed are joyfully remembered recipes. Sadly, Kim's narration fails to capture the elegance of this memoir's language. Later, when Pol Pot's genocide necessitates Nguon's dramatic departure to Vietnam without her mother, Kim's plodding pacing and flat tone don't reflect the horrors of the refugee experience with its omnipresent poverty and death. Returning to a decimated Cambodia, Nguon recovers from the trauma of her experiences by following her mother's philosophy on slow noodles to rebuild her life. If only the narration of this audiobook were more skillful. S.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-09-28
In an evocative, haunting memoir, a survivor of Cambodia’s “Year Zero” generation recounts how memories of her culinary heritage have sustained her.
Some tragedies are almost too large to describe. One of history’s most notorious was the genocide imposed by Pol Pot on Cambodia in the early 1970s, a project to destroy the societal structure and replace it with an agrarian society based on twisted Marxist principles. “The murderers among us would have us believe that history is slippery and unknowable,” she writes. “Insisting otherwise is an act of defiance.” Nguon and her family, half Vietnamese, were obvious targets, and they escaped to Saigon just in time for the arrival of the conquering North Vietnamese army. Nguon managed to scrape together a living with various jobs, although she often subsisted on small bowls of rice with some salt. Through the years of suffering and resilience, the author remembers the beautiful, subtle tastes of the Khmer dishes made by her mother, and she punctuates the book with recipes and the memories tied to them. Ngoun was shuffled between refugee camps before she was sent back to Cambodia, which was slowly emerging from chaos. Among other jobs, she worked as a cook for brothel workers, and she had the advantage of being literate and was good at making contacts. With the help of aid organizations, she was able to set up a center for helping Khmer women, teaching them silk weaving and providing literacy classes. Many parts of the text are heart-rendingly sad, but the author leavens the narrative with recipes for dishes like chicken lime soup and banh sung. Though the subject matter makes the book a sometimes difficult read, those who dive in will find it a remarkable and important piece of work.
A moving book that mixes horror and hope, disaster and good food, creating a poignant, fascinating read.
