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A review by em_reads_books
On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu
4.0
3.5 stars, bumping it up to 4 largely out of spite, because wow, there are so many negative reviews of a very particular kind. A lot of folks don't like how often the author talks about her marriage. Or the fact that she spends a lot of time describing her struggles with her identity (as a woman, as a wife, as a Chinese-American living in China). Most of the top reviews here use the word "whining." And I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the third book I've read in a row by an Asian-American female journalist about her life abroad (after [b:Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris|17675004|Mastering the Art of French Eating Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris|Ann Mah|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1365871514s/17675004.jpg|24678739] and [b:Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite|20685373|Without You, There Is No Us My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite|Suki Kim|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405292426s/20685373.jpg|40000267]) that inspired the same criticism.
I get it, it's a matter of taste how much we want the author to insert themselves in a nonfiction narrative, and I usually fall on the side of the more the better - I want to hear how the story got made, about the travel logistics and translation pitfalls, how the author met their subjects and got words of wisdom out of them for the book. I don't want the author to pretend they're a totally neutral party, coming in without their own individual and cultural lens on the subject. Maybe other folks just don't like that and prefer the story without the meta-story, and that's fine.
But I'm not sure how you expect an author to separate those aspects of an Asian culinary travelogue from her identity as a woman or as Chinese-American or, in this case, as a wife. She points it out herself near the beginning: she hears constant questions about the whereabouts of her husband throughout the journey, something missing from the writings of her favorite male travel authors. She travels through parts of the world with extremely rigid gender roles and is welcomed into the women's realm by virtue of her gender, and into the men's by virtue of her nationality and profession. She gets questions about her nationality and ethnicity - are you one of us or one of them? - along the journey, ones her white husband doesn't have to contend with.
And her subject is food. In particular, everyday cooking by families and restaurateurs, versus advanced gourmet stuff. Some of the parts I found particularly fascinating were her conversations in different countries about whose job cooking is at home versus in the workplace. And how traditions get passed down, which have been left behind, what hospitality looks like along the Silk Road. If you take gender roles and family roles out of that conversation, well, you're left with a list of tasty things, and how they were cooked and eaten.
Point being, this author doesn't have a neutral (read, white male) point of view, and in my opinion the book is better for it. Sure, the jokes fall flat sometimes, the transitions between talking about her subjects and herself aren't always smooth, but I hate seeing these totally legitimate worries about how one's individual identity, career path, independence, and love of cooking will change in the transition from woman to wife dismissed as "whining." Is her life more full of possibilities and her resume more interesting than most of ours? Yeah, but...what international food writer's isn't? (In contrast, see [b:In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey|20821173|In Search of the Perfect Loaf A Home Baker's Odyssey|Samuel Fromartz|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1396671230s/20821173.jpg|40167053] - a similar read in a lot of ways, but not a single word in the reviews about how privileged this writer must be to be paid to follow a passion, and why must he talk so much about his amazing family and home kitchen...)
Yes, this is more of a rant than a review at this point. I enjoyed the book. I especially liked seeing the gradual cultural and culinary changes as the narrative moved slowly west - ingredients and methods disappear and reappear, attitudes towards food and cooking and hospitality change sometimes slowly, sometimes jarringly. Interpretations of American food - especially fast food - pop up here and there with their own weird significance to the local culture. The history of the noodle itself is a little too lost to history to satisfy a reader who's here for answers to the book's driving questions, but I recommend it if you enjoy reading about the experience of traveling and eating. Unless you can't eat gluten - in that case, stay far away.
I get it, it's a matter of taste how much we want the author to insert themselves in a nonfiction narrative, and I usually fall on the side of the more the better - I want to hear how the story got made, about the travel logistics and translation pitfalls, how the author met their subjects and got words of wisdom out of them for the book. I don't want the author to pretend they're a totally neutral party, coming in without their own individual and cultural lens on the subject. Maybe other folks just don't like that and prefer the story without the meta-story, and that's fine.
But I'm not sure how you expect an author to separate those aspects of an Asian culinary travelogue from her identity as a woman or as Chinese-American or, in this case, as a wife. She points it out herself near the beginning: she hears constant questions about the whereabouts of her husband throughout the journey, something missing from the writings of her favorite male travel authors. She travels through parts of the world with extremely rigid gender roles and is welcomed into the women's realm by virtue of her gender, and into the men's by virtue of her nationality and profession. She gets questions about her nationality and ethnicity - are you one of us or one of them? - along the journey, ones her white husband doesn't have to contend with.
And her subject is food. In particular, everyday cooking by families and restaurateurs, versus advanced gourmet stuff. Some of the parts I found particularly fascinating were her conversations in different countries about whose job cooking is at home versus in the workplace. And how traditions get passed down, which have been left behind, what hospitality looks like along the Silk Road. If you take gender roles and family roles out of that conversation, well, you're left with a list of tasty things, and how they were cooked and eaten.
Point being, this author doesn't have a neutral (read, white male) point of view, and in my opinion the book is better for it. Sure, the jokes fall flat sometimes, the transitions between talking about her subjects and herself aren't always smooth, but I hate seeing these totally legitimate worries about how one's individual identity, career path, independence, and love of cooking will change in the transition from woman to wife dismissed as "whining." Is her life more full of possibilities and her resume more interesting than most of ours? Yeah, but...what international food writer's isn't? (In contrast, see [b:In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey|20821173|In Search of the Perfect Loaf A Home Baker's Odyssey|Samuel Fromartz|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1396671230s/20821173.jpg|40167053] - a similar read in a lot of ways, but not a single word in the reviews about how privileged this writer must be to be paid to follow a passion, and why must he talk so much about his amazing family and home kitchen...)
Yes, this is more of a rant than a review at this point. I enjoyed the book. I especially liked seeing the gradual cultural and culinary changes as the narrative moved slowly west - ingredients and methods disappear and reappear, attitudes towards food and cooking and hospitality change sometimes slowly, sometimes jarringly. Interpretations of American food - especially fast food - pop up here and there with their own weird significance to the local culture. The history of the noodle itself is a little too lost to history to satisfy a reader who's here for answers to the book's driving questions, but I recommend it if you enjoy reading about the experience of traveling and eating. Unless you can't eat gluten - in that case, stay far away.