"By the second grade, I was regularly being informed that I was a bitch." --from Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Bich Minh Nguyen's first book, Stealing Buddha's Dinner-- a memoir about her wonder years in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the late '70s and through most of the '80s-- is the kind of book I knew had to exist, but only now has it actually arrived. Seen through the eyes of a food-obsessed young girl who "said nothing but remembered everything," it's a story about an immigrant community's first moments in a new country.

It's something interesting to consider: the images one draws upon when thinking about the forefathers of non-white America. I remember coming across a rare photo of 19th century African Americans, lined up in front of a Southern plantation; a mural found on a building in east Los Angeles, depicting a vibrant scene of early Mexican American commerce; a sepia-toned museum collection of Chinese American men laying railroad tracks in a Californian valley.

For the first iconic moment of Vietnamese America, the scene is probably something close to this: an extended family of seven to sixteen people gathered for a holiday portrait-- everyone wearing either disco-collared polyester shirts or flowery hippy-print blouses given by the Salvation Army or other charity groups-- with an Air Supply song on the radio while both spring rolls and a Shake 'N Bake turkey cool off on a kitchen counter. Nguyen's memoir brings this heartbreakingly ridiculous scene to life.

Nguyen currently teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University, is married to the novelist Porter Shreve, and pronounces her first name as "bit." I share the same last name, though this time I'd like to set aside the usual disclaimer that I have no relation to the subject of this interview. After reading this book, my relationship to the author feels far deeper than I had expected.

Tommy Nguyen: There seems to be a very common coming-of-age setting for the very first wave of Vietnamese American children: '70s hand-me-down clothing, '80s pop and new wave music, Buddig luncheon meat and Pringles. Tell me about the socio-economic realities of that particular time and how they helped define this generation of Vietnamese Americans.

Bich Minh Nguyen: Can I ask you where you grew up?

TN: I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, until I was five years old, and then my family moved to Orange County, California, in the early 1980s.

BMN: It's just really interesting hearing where other people resettled after the refugee camps. In my mind, all the lucky people got to go to California. But I think I know more people who resettled in small, more [Middle-American] towns. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the work that was available to immigrants or refugees was factory work. My dad did that for many years, and so did my uncles, even though they were trained to do other work in Vietnam. My dad, for example, was going to be an eye doctor. But in Grand Rapids, my dad worked in a feather factory, and that smell of feathers was on him whenever he came home. I knew, always, even as a little girl, that this was blue-collar work. I didn't know the word "blue-collar" back then, but I somehow knew it was blue-collar in the pejorative sense of the word. Most of my classmates' fathers did not work in factories. So very often I felt the class difference, which was compounded by the racial and ethnic differences.

Children learn right away what the status symbols are. For example, I knew that generic cookies were very shameful, and I thought about these symbols a lot because I felt they prevented me from fitting in. My stepmother really wanted us to have free school lunches, but we were just above the qualifying level. That was her reality-- she saw it as "trying to get by." I didn't see it that way. I read so much as a girl, and I had these fantastical visions from-- well, British literature, frankly. I felt that there was this other, better world out there. And I was stuck in this one.

TN: Tell me more about your obsession with food, and how that influenced your understanding of class and culture as a young girl.

"Secretly, I loved my grandmother's food. But I would never bring her food to school"

BMN: Let me start off by saying, Vietnamese food in Grand Rapids, up until very recently, was just strange. All the Vietnamese shops were in a particular part of town, totally segregated. We were the only ones in our neighborhood who were Vietnamese and cooked this "weird food." I had a very strong sense that it was not normal. Of course, I would never want to invite my friends over; they were always white girls. I was afraid they would think I was gross-- I think "gross" was a word that was used quite often back then. Secretly, I loved my grandmother's food. But I would never bring her food to school; that would be like wearing a "Kick Me" sign.

TN: One of my favorite paragraphs is the last paragraph of the "Ponderosa" chapter. In it, you describe the paradox of the American buffet restaurant, as "so much emptiness in so much possibility."

BMN: The funny thing is my dad still likes buffets. It's really the only place he wants to eat. When I was kid, all that shiny, gelatinous American food, all very slick-- it seemed magical, like jewels. But if you continue to consume it, the promise that it originally seemed to hold turns out to be completely empty. And I had that realization. I truly invested for years in the power of American junk food, that it held the power of transformation.

TN: Let's talk about your stepmother Rosa. Despite not being Vietnamese and not being your real mother, she made sure that you were proud of your culture. She made you keep your name.

BMN: She had a real influence on us, and there was a disconnect between what I felt then as a child and what I understand now. As a child, I really wanted to assimilate, in the real old-fashioned, awful sense of the word. And my stepmother wasn't going to have any of that. She was really proud to be a Mexican American, and she wanted us to be as proud of being Vietnamese. But I was not equipped as a child to understand cultural pride. I just wanted to blend in with all the white students at school. So we had a lot of conflict. She had a very firm sense of justice and equality, things that I now hold very dear. But at the time, I thought she was this big obstacle, and that she was trying to make me more Vietnamese, when, as a child, I just wanted to be more white. But now as I look back, I am so grateful that she was stubbornly there.

Even these days I still think about changing my name all the time. I still think it would be so much easier and, in fact, it never got easier from the time I was in the third grade. So sometimes, I think, maybe I should change it. Why should I go through the usual embarrassment while I'm talking to a stranger, or the insurance company. It's a very difficult name. I'm really torn about it because I've hung with it for so long because of the cultural importance attached to it. I thought letting it go would be letting something integral to me go. At the same time, I think of how easy it would be just to be Beth.

TN: For the most of the book you look at Christianity as merely a part of the landscape of a new foreign country. But there's a part late in the book where you have a more severe, critical look at Christianity. How passionate were you about that section in the book, and did you come across any resistance to its inclusion?

"...girlfriends would try to convert me and tell me that I was going to hell. I would sort of laugh it off."

BMN: No one ever said anything about it. I was concerned that someone would. And I'm still sort of waiting. People in Grand Rapids have been incredibly kind and generous about the book. I keep getting emails from people who knew Grand Rapids or once lived there, and they say, "I understand the environment where you grew up." I think so much has changed though, from 1984 to now. Thank goodness. The Christianity represented by the reformed Christians in my neighborhood was really oppressive. And for most of my youth, girlfriends would try to convert me and tell me that I was going to hell. I would sort of laugh it off.

But the section that you talk about represents the anger that I did feel-- of being told repeatedly that you're bad and a heathen and that you're going to hell. There was a lot of anger that I hadn't been expressing, and I think it did come out in that section. That section was, "This is how I'm figuring out Buddhism, and this is what I'm being told about a strict form of Christianity that was practiced in my neighborhood." It became offensive to me. It went totally against what my grandmother was teaching me.

TN: There have been so many extraordinary stories told about refugee families fleeing Vietnam that, in a way, such a story could have ended up sounding very ordinary in the hands of a less capable writer. Tell me about the pressures you felt in approaching this part of your memoir.

"...there is particular power attached to writing and publishing a memoir... when it's completed, you're changing and stating something about your past."

BMN: I find all those stories terrifying, mesmerizing. It's still continuing in other countries. And when I hear those stories on NPR, and I can't get over the lack of imagination I have in thinking about what it would mean to be the one who decides it's time to leave everything that you've ever known. Could I have done that? I can't even comprehend. My dad was my age now, which is 32, when we left. The whole lack of imagination, of not being able to comprehend what it was like, was a big obstacle for me in telling that story. And for years and years I had trouble writing that story, because I wanted to be accurate, I wanted to do it justice. I wanted to truly understand what it was like, that I could get as close to it as possible. So that required talking to my family over and over. The gap of what they experienced and what I know my life now based on what they went through is just amazing.

It's important for people to know that a memoir is only one person's point of view. And had someone else in my family gathered these stories, that person would have presented them in a completely different way. I think that kind of acknowledgement is also important because there is particular power attached to writing and publishing a memoir-- that you can't think about at all while you're in the process of writing it-- and that power is that when it's completed, you're changing and stating something about your past. And it's permanent because it's on paper.

TN: What is the book you are writing now?

BMN: The book I'm writing now is called Short Girls. It's about two sisters. I told my sister it's not about her, but I think she thinks it is. Both sisters are short Vietnamese American women. It's autobiographical in the shortness, because I'm really short.

TN: How short?

BMN: I'm five feet tall. So that's really short, especially in Grand Rapids, which is one of the tallest cities. I was always thinking about how short I was and how people kept making short jokes. Or how they would lean their elbows on my head, as if I were a table. So when I was developing this novel, I was thinking about shortness in America, and how this could become a metaphor for a life that's out of reach. Shortness is something that you can't change, ever. No matter how many heels you try on, you're still going to be short. The father in the novel is also short, and he's an inventor who makes things that improve the lives of short people. He's a failed inventor, of course.

TN: Knowing that you may one day write a novel about short people, did you consciously leave out some of those life experiences from your memoir?

BMN: No. I didn't think about that at all. In fiction, you get to, and have to, make stuff up. And if you can't, then you shouldn't be writing.

TN: How does the selection process work for a memoir writer?

"How can you not remember?" A memoir in my mind is not about what you remember. It's what you can't forget."

BMN: Sometimes people ask me about memoirs: "How can you remember so much?" I'm amazed by that question, because I'm thinking, "How can you not remember?" A memoir in my mind is not about what you remember. It's what you can't forget. Everything in this book is what I just can't forget in my mind. There's a ton of information that is lost, that I really don't remember. So a memoir is really just a small, a very small slice of a past. But it needs to be shaped; it can't just be anecdote after anecdote. For me, food was the organizing factor. It was a way to think about how all these past events made sense. And memories that didn't fit into that scheme simply didn't fit into the book. I could have written a completely different memoir with a different organizing metaphor. But I probably won't.

TN: What has been surprising to you about the reaction to the book?

BMN: What's really surprising is how many people want the book to be more Vietnamese.

TN: White Americans or Vietnamese Americans?

BMN: About 60-40. They all want it to be more about Vietnam. Probably something more exotic. And that's a little disturbing. I did an interview for a newspaper a couple of months ago, and they wanted me to pose for a photo holding a pair of chopsticks. They had no idea why I was saying no. I think they thought I was just being difficult.

For the most part the reaction hasn't been that way. But when it does come up, I think it stays in my mind more than it should because it's startling. It reminds me that if you are Asian American, people will see you in a certain way. They want to see you in certain way. And that's something that I don't think about at all when I'm sitting at my desk, writing.

Tommy Nguyen has written for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Weekly, among other publications. His award-winning documentary short, "Boom Town, Vietnam," aired on public television in 2005. He lives in New York, where he's an associate producer for both Dateline and the documentary and new media unit of NBC News.