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A review by camille_caterpillar
On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu
4.0
Book Riot "Read Harder" 2021 challenge #11: A food memoir by an author of colour."
I don't read many memoirs unless they are chronicling a specific era or topic that I am interested in. In those cases, they are more like a documentary with a personal approach, like taking a tour with a particularly open and chatty guide. By definition, I assumed a food memoir would have an extra focus on, well, food, which is something I do have some interest in. Still, I wanted something more. The topic of food can easily get mundane as it is so enmeshed with daily lives and routines.
I picked On the Noodle Road because, beyond food, the subject matter made me suspect it would touch on the anthropology and history of some of the most historically rich regions of the world. Travelogues were also new to me. As a child and in my early adolescence, I devoured adventure novels, and, to me, adventure was often synonymous with travel. Some of the best plots involved expeditions to faraway lands. As far as I was concerned, the expedition itself was the best part; destination mattered very little. In The Noodle Road, there is no one destination, each stop tells its own story.
Style
Though she is a professional chef, Lin-Liu's food writing isn't too technical - no need to be a seasoned chef to appreciate the delicacies she describes - but her expertise does help make her writing multisensorial. Her knowledge of food preparation allows her descriptions to go beyond taste and appearance and include textures, densities, which she explains through ingredients and cooking methods. Far from reading like a series of grocery lists, Lin-Liu's food portraits always come in the context of an adventure. She ties the food with its cultural context and with the stories of those who make it. Lin-Liu's style is definitely more human-scale, peppered with new friends and anecdotes. If one's seeking a 'hard science', objective account, this isn't the book. It is, after all, also a memoir.
All in all, the book was light on history. Again, it isn't so much a criticism as a reassessment of my own expectations. The author's initial stated goal is very ambitious: retrace the history of noodles, their invention, and how they spread from China to Italy. Such a goal may have benefitted from a more academic approach. I didn't mind, personally, but the topic of noodles seems to become less and less present as the book progresses, until the author reaches Italy. She even questions herself on whether or not her project's focus has changed from food-history to soul-searching. I have to say that soul-searching is not as much of an interest of mine. Thankfully, though the initial question is never conclusively answered, she stays mostly on the topic of food.
In my opinion, the segment on China was the most interesting and well-researched owing, perhaps, to the fact that it is where the author lives and where she supposedly has the most extensive network. It is also the longest segment. Where some regions may be traversed relatively rapidly, China gets a more detailed account of its diverse cultures and landscapes.
It seems Central-Asia is not quite the food destination, not as much, at least, as China, Iran, Turkey, and Italy. Of course, with the focus of the book being food, this results in a somewhat short segment. Still, I daydreamed about that week-long hike the author and her husband went on in Kyrgyzstan. I also daydreamed about a Kazak snack consisting of chocolate-covered cheese curds. I will absolutely try to replicate that myself!
Iran was heavy on politics. Lin-Liu's perspective remains resolutely American, though she is open-minded and makes a point to connect with people in every region she visits. I can hardly fault her for balking at the iron-fisted regimes she encountered, and I appreciate the tinge of danger her passport gave to her Iranian visit (a friend of mine, an Irish national, visited Iran in what seemed to be a much more relaxed holiday than what Lin-Liu experienced). So, this isn't exactly a criticism so much as a note that the tone of this chapter wasn't quite the same. I was surprised not to see much mention of architecture, or more Silk Road history, Iran being such a central part of it.
Turkey and Italy, the last two stops, find the author refreshed after a travelling hiatus and more comfortable in mostly Western-minded cultures. There, she also addresses the differences in culture and cooking throughout one country's regions. The Italian segment, I thought was particularly rich in culinary knowledge.
Equally distributed among all segments, still, are really fascinating tidbits of information that will make the reader very worldly and fun at their next dinner party.
Travel, Food, and Identity: Why I'm glad I first travelogue I read was written by a woman of colour
After resolutely falling in love with the travelogue genre, I looked for lists of recommendations. Needless to say, most were by white men. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable for two reasons. First, it made me question the perspective with which the writer may be chronicling their adventures. While part of the fun is the writer themselves being an outsider, I'd like it to come with open-mindedness and some degree of knowledge. This isn't to say that I won't read any travelogues penned by white Europeans or Americans - I promise there are some on my TBR - but they are either recent works (as I have more faith in the sensibilities and knowledge of modern authors) or works about Europe. It isn't to deny older anthropological works' historical importance; I just don't want to read them.
Jen Lin-Liu is a Chinese-American that has lived large portions of her life both in China and in the USA. Her understanding of her identity as a minority, stemming from her formative years in the USA, humbles her perspective. However, she deals with an interesting duality; in China, Lin-Liu is part of the Han ethnic majority. As we hear a lot in the news lately, unfortunately, the Han-centric CPC is hostile to ethnic minorities. Lin-Liu does touch on the repression of Tibetan and Uighur communities in China and recognizes the discomfort that her Han appearance may cause. She is careful and sensible, preferring to learn some Uighur and limit her use of colonially-connotated Mandarin.
Secondly, it is sadly obvious that travel, for women and ethnic minorities, posed a problem that it did not for white men. The scarcity of well-reviewed travelogues by people who do not fit the latter demographic is glaring.
I say "well-reviewed" because it was hard not to notice how much harsher criticism seemed to be towards female authors, specifically female authors of colour (I am thinking especially of Lin-Liu and of Monisha Rajesh as they are both on my TBR). Their tone would be quickly picked apart, their intentions and fitness for travel questioned. "Whiny" is the word that came up a lot. Not to say that no white man was criticised, of course, but for every person who found Popular White Male Travel Writer's tone too acerbic (and I note a difference in the vocabulary here, PWMTW could be called a jerk, but never whiny), another found it amusing.
It seems what displeased many here was the way Lin-Liu talked about the intersection of her marriage and her career. I have never been in her position, but I don't find it very hard to imagine that a woman's career and, more importantly, professional identity could be rocked by marriage. Still nowadays (and yes, in "the West"), marriage marks a slowing point in a woman's career. Unmarried women typically earn more than married women, regardless of whether the marriage was common law, legal, or religious. I am not against marriage at all, but I think her position deserves more sympathy than it got, especially since she contrasts it with the traditional role of women in many of the countries she visits, and even in her home country of China. She understands and acknowledges her luck at having an American husband and upbringing that affords her a lot more independence. Her commentary on the place of women, including her own, could not be more pertinent when dealing with a topic such as food, home cooking being the traditional domain of wives and mothers and the more lucrative professional cooking being the domain of men.
I don't read many memoirs unless they are chronicling a specific era or topic that I am interested in. In those cases, they are more like a documentary with a personal approach, like taking a tour with a particularly open and chatty guide. By definition, I assumed a food memoir would have an extra focus on, well, food, which is something I do have some interest in. Still, I wanted something more. The topic of food can easily get mundane as it is so enmeshed with daily lives and routines.
I picked On the Noodle Road because, beyond food, the subject matter made me suspect it would touch on the anthropology and history of some of the most historically rich regions of the world. Travelogues were also new to me. As a child and in my early adolescence, I devoured adventure novels, and, to me, adventure was often synonymous with travel. Some of the best plots involved expeditions to faraway lands. As far as I was concerned, the expedition itself was the best part; destination mattered very little. In The Noodle Road, there is no one destination, each stop tells its own story.
Style
Though she is a professional chef, Lin-Liu's food writing isn't too technical - no need to be a seasoned chef to appreciate the delicacies she describes - but her expertise does help make her writing multisensorial. Her knowledge of food preparation allows her descriptions to go beyond taste and appearance and include textures, densities, which she explains through ingredients and cooking methods. Far from reading like a series of grocery lists, Lin-Liu's food portraits always come in the context of an adventure. She ties the food with its cultural context and with the stories of those who make it. Lin-Liu's style is definitely more human-scale, peppered with new friends and anecdotes. If one's seeking a 'hard science', objective account, this isn't the book. It is, after all, also a memoir.
All in all, the book was light on history. Again, it isn't so much a criticism as a reassessment of my own expectations. The author's initial stated goal is very ambitious: retrace the history of noodles, their invention, and how they spread from China to Italy. Such a goal may have benefitted from a more academic approach. I didn't mind, personally, but the topic of noodles seems to become less and less present as the book progresses, until the author reaches Italy. She even questions herself on whether or not her project's focus has changed from food-history to soul-searching. I have to say that soul-searching is not as much of an interest of mine. Thankfully, though the initial question is never conclusively answered, she stays mostly on the topic of food.
In my opinion, the segment on China was the most interesting and well-researched owing, perhaps, to the fact that it is where the author lives and where she supposedly has the most extensive network. It is also the longest segment. Where some regions may be traversed relatively rapidly, China gets a more detailed account of its diverse cultures and landscapes.
It seems Central-Asia is not quite the food destination, not as much, at least, as China, Iran, Turkey, and Italy. Of course, with the focus of the book being food, this results in a somewhat short segment. Still, I daydreamed about that week-long hike the author and her husband went on in Kyrgyzstan. I also daydreamed about a Kazak snack consisting of chocolate-covered cheese curds. I will absolutely try to replicate that myself!
Iran was heavy on politics. Lin-Liu's perspective remains resolutely American, though she is open-minded and makes a point to connect with people in every region she visits. I can hardly fault her for balking at the iron-fisted regimes she encountered, and I appreciate the tinge of danger her passport gave to her Iranian visit (a friend of mine, an Irish national, visited Iran in what seemed to be a much more relaxed holiday than what Lin-Liu experienced). So, this isn't exactly a criticism so much as a note that the tone of this chapter wasn't quite the same. I was surprised not to see much mention of architecture, or more Silk Road history, Iran being such a central part of it.
Turkey and Italy, the last two stops, find the author refreshed after a travelling hiatus and more comfortable in mostly Western-minded cultures. There, she also addresses the differences in culture and cooking throughout one country's regions. The Italian segment, I thought was particularly rich in culinary knowledge.
Equally distributed among all segments, still, are really fascinating tidbits of information that will make the reader very worldly and fun at their next dinner party.
Travel, Food, and Identity: Why I'm glad I first travelogue I read was written by a woman of colour
After resolutely falling in love with the travelogue genre, I looked for lists of recommendations. Needless to say, most were by white men. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable for two reasons. First, it made me question the perspective with which the writer may be chronicling their adventures. While part of the fun is the writer themselves being an outsider, I'd like it to come with open-mindedness and some degree of knowledge. This isn't to say that I won't read any travelogues penned by white Europeans or Americans - I promise there are some on my TBR - but they are either recent works (as I have more faith in the sensibilities and knowledge of modern authors) or works about Europe. It isn't to deny older anthropological works' historical importance; I just don't want to read them.
Jen Lin-Liu is a Chinese-American that has lived large portions of her life both in China and in the USA. Her understanding of her identity as a minority, stemming from her formative years in the USA, humbles her perspective. However, she deals with an interesting duality; in China, Lin-Liu is part of the Han ethnic majority. As we hear a lot in the news lately, unfortunately, the Han-centric CPC is hostile to ethnic minorities. Lin-Liu does touch on the repression of Tibetan and Uighur communities in China and recognizes the discomfort that her Han appearance may cause. She is careful and sensible, preferring to learn some Uighur and limit her use of colonially-connotated Mandarin.
Secondly, it is sadly obvious that travel, for women and ethnic minorities, posed a problem that it did not for white men. The scarcity of well-reviewed travelogues by people who do not fit the latter demographic is glaring.
I say "well-reviewed" because it was hard not to notice how much harsher criticism seemed to be towards female authors, specifically female authors of colour (I am thinking especially of Lin-Liu and of Monisha Rajesh as they are both on my TBR). Their tone would be quickly picked apart, their intentions and fitness for travel questioned. "Whiny" is the word that came up a lot. Not to say that no white man was criticised, of course, but for every person who found Popular White Male Travel Writer's tone too acerbic (and I note a difference in the vocabulary here, PWMTW could be called a jerk, but never whiny), another found it amusing.
It seems what displeased many here was the way Lin-Liu talked about the intersection of her marriage and her career. I have never been in her position, but I don't find it very hard to imagine that a woman's career and, more importantly, professional identity could be rocked by marriage. Still nowadays (and yes, in "the West"), marriage marks a slowing point in a woman's career. Unmarried women typically earn more than married women, regardless of whether the marriage was common law, legal, or religious. I am not against marriage at all, but I think her position deserves more sympathy than it got, especially since she contrasts it with the traditional role of women in many of the countries she visits, and even in her home country of China. She understands and acknowledges her luck at having an American husband and upbringing that affords her a lot more independence. Her commentary on the place of women, including her own, could not be more pertinent when dealing with a topic such as food, home cooking being the traditional domain of wives and mothers and the more lucrative professional cooking being the domain of men.