Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon
“You have fled war, occupation, and countless miseries and washed ashore somewhere peaceful. Surely, the decent people of the world know what you have endured. Surely, they wait for you on some free shore, offering smiles, blankets, and steaming bowls of soup! It’s an absurd wish, of course.”
It’s not absurd, though, is it? It’s human. It's a belief in community care.
Slow Noodles by Chantha Nguon is a beautiful book that serves as a memoir, recipe book, feminist challenge to gender roles, historical account of violence and political unrest in Asia, and an account of motherhood.
She shares her story of being born into considerable wealth in Cambodia, noticing her comparable privilege to the other kids and members in her community but through the expected naive lens of youth.
When political unrest begins to impact their community, her Cambodian father had passed away. With a Vietnamese mother in a time of Vietnamese persecution and no father figure to protect them, the family fled to Vietnam. Her journey of displacement then continues to Thailand and ultimately back to Cambodia. She lives in homes under communist rule, refugee camps, kitchens, absolute poverty, brothels, and ultimately returns back home to Cambodia where she opens the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center.
Chantha Nguon and her husband eventually open the Stung Treng Women's Development Centre, with a weaving centre attached to provide income and valuable skills to the young women in surrounding communities.
Throughout Slow Noodles, she tells her story. Her storytelling style strongly resembles the weaving itself - the life experience she carries is never left behind but consistently threaded through the book. Into that storytelling, she weaves her mother’s recipes and the tastes of her home. It is reminiscent of Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart in the way that food is connected to home and memory.
The ultimate impact of this book on me was a reminder of the wealth that we are born into here in Canada. Times are hard right now for most of us, and it’s easy to think about all we are struggling with. But we are generally safe. We have food. We have freedom of choice and expression and religion.
This book was a reminder to be grateful and it hit me hard as someone who works with newcomers to Canada.
I highly recommend it as a read for everyone. Especially those of us born and raised in ‘the West.’ It's an engrossing story that challenged me in unexpected ways to reflect on my own part in the disconnect we have with the reality and experience of refugees.
Reading Journal Questions
What does help and care look like to you?
How do borders and political barriers impact our ability to help each other?
What foods do you cook when you're feeling sad, excited, or homesick?
Do you have any recipes that have been passed down in your family?
Interested in learning more?
Stung Treng Women's Development Centre
If you have read Slow Noodles but not Crying in H Mart, and felt inspired by the connections to food as memory, check out Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.
