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The Book of Salt cover

Literature

Literature

The Book of Salt

Monique Truong

A debut novel by Vietnamese American author Monique Truong, The Book of Salt explores themes of exile, identity, and desire through the story of Bình, a Vietnamese cook living in the household of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in interwar Paris. Blending historical fiction with intimate personal narrative, the novel examines the complexities of cultural displacement, colonial legacies, and queer identity within a vibrant artistic milieu.

Difficulty Level
Intermediate
Academic Level
Undergraduate
vietnamese american literaturepostcolonial fictiondiaspora literaturequeer literatureimmigrant narratives

01 / Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Citation

Truong, M. (2003). The Book of Salt. Houghton Mifflin.

Chapter Summary

The Book of Salt is a historical novel and Monique Truong's debut, about 260 pages in its first edition. It is set mainly in Paris and in French-colonial Vietnam and follows Bình, a Vietnamese cook in the household of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. It is built as a stream-of-consciousness narrative, in which events from the Paris of the 1920s and 1930s are set beside Bình's memories of his childhood and youth. The novel is not organized into titled chapters, so this section follows its main strands.

The Paris Household

The novel opens with Bình examining two photographs taken when his employers leave for America, explaining what he was doing in the background of each. Stein is shown as exuberant, devoted to her writing and to her weekly salons; Toklas manages the household, including Bình's employment, types Stein's manuscripts and suffers from jealousy and insecurity. Truong's portraits of these historical figures are fictional, said to have been inspired by brief mentions of the household cook in the writings of Stein and Toklas.

Childhood and Youth in Vietnam

Bình's memories take him back to colonial Vietnam. His father, a Catholic pastor who drinks, criticizes him and eventually disowns him when he discovers that his son is homosexual; his mother, the only member of the family who appreciates him, teaches him to cook. His older brother Minh, a sous-chef in the Governor-General's kitchen under the French chef Blériot, finds Bình a place in the kitchen and teaches him cooking and French. A romantic relationship with Blériot ends in Bình's dismissal.

The Man on the Bridge

In 1927, years before he enters the Stein household, Bình meets another Vietnamese man in Paris, who has worked at a variety of jobs, including cook and photograph retoucher, and who is later identified in a photograph under the name Nguyen Ai Quoc, the name Ho Chi Minh used in France. The novel never states the identification outright. Bình saves money to buy the photograph.

The Sweet Sunday Man

An American iridologist in Paris becomes Bình's lover. His real interest is in Stein and her work, and he persuades Bình to take one of her manuscripts. Bình also finds a notebook in which Stein has written about him, in which he can recognize his own name many times without being able to read what is said.

Key Concepts

Themes and Motifs

  • Photographs: images frame the novel from its opening scene, and the photograph of the man on the bridge becomes one of Bình's most valuable possessions; they are also a way for Bình to tell his story in his own terms.
  • Salt: a recurring image whose meanings shift with its source, kitchen, sweat, tears or sea; the connection of salt with salary links it to labor and worth.
  • Colonialism: the colonial presence in Vietnam shapes Bình's life both there and in Paris; his brother, the man on the bridge and Bình himself represent different responses to it.
  • Diaspora: Bình's position as a first-generation immigrant brings the difficulties of a second language, new social norms and the search for others from his own community.
  • Food as intimacy: Truong has said that food or its preparation, at its best, is a profound act of intimacy.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

  • Recognition on publication. The novel won the 2004 Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association and the Young Lions Fiction Award, was co-winner of the 2004 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and was a nominee for the 2003 Lambda Literary Award.
  • Viewing the famous from the kitchen. Telling the story of a famous household through its cook turns the perspective of the usual literary portrait of Stein and Toklas around, so that the novel's Parisian salon society is seen by a colonial subject who works for it. Commentary has described this as a kind of "reverse Orientalism".
  • Several themes held in one narrator. Colonialism, queer identity, exile and food come together through one character's memories rather than in separate essays, which makes the book a useful single text for discussion of postcolonial and diasporic writing.
  • Writing about food. Blurbs and reader reviews single out the passages on cooking and the novel's lyrical, forlorn tone.

Limitations

  • A demanding structure. The stream-of-consciousness movement between Paris and Vietnam and between past and present can be hard to follow, and some readers report finding parts disjointed. Reading with a note of dates and places can help.
  • Fictionalized history. Stein, Toklas and the possible appearance of Ho Chi Minh are imagined, so the novel is not a source for biographical fact, and a reader unfamiliar with Stein may miss references.
  • Sensitive subject matter. The novel includes parental rejection and a homophobic father, colonial hierarchy and sexual relationships that may call for care in a classroom.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the postcolonial and ethnic literature list, The Book of Salt is a novel set beside several introductions and theoretical works. John McLeod's Beginning Postcolonialism is an introduction for undergraduates meeting the field for the first time, and Elleke Boehmer's Colonial and Postcolonial Literature is a critical and historical introduction that includes the movements resisting empire; either gives vocabulary for colonial hierarchy and diaspora. Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism studies the relationship between Western empires and the culture they produced, especially the novel, and gives a lens for reading Bình's position in a French household; Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin's The Empire Writes Back is a theoretical account of post-colonial writing in English.

Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera is the natural companion text: it mixes essay, memoir and poetry about the US-Mexico borderlands, while Truong's novel considers exile and identity in Paris. Reading the novel before the theory lets the story supply examples; reading it after lets the theory suggest questions.

How to Use This Book

The novel suits undergraduates in literature and in postcolonial and queer studies. It needs no prerequisite beyond willingness to read a non-linear narrative, though a little background on Stein and Toklas in Paris helps.

A practical plan:

  • First read: Read the novel through for its story and mood before consulting any commentary.
  • Second pass: Follow one strand at a time, such as the photographs, the salt images or the colonial kitchen, noting where each appears.
  • With theory: Read the relevant parts of McLeod or Boehmer, then a chapter of Said or Ashcroft and colleagues, and ask how Bình sits between acceptance and resistance.
  • For discussion: Compare the way language and naming work here with the multilingual writing of Anzaldúa.