The Book of Salt

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The Book of Salt by Monique Truong presents a narrative through the eyes of Binh, a Vietnamese cook. It tells his story predominantly in Paris and his hometown in Vietnam. This book does not have a linear narrative structure, rather Binh speaks of his history in a stream of consciousness manner, showing bits and pieces of various people who have touched his life and various incidents that have brought him to where he is now.

[edit] Plotlines and characters

They are the two Mesdames of 27 Rue de Fleurus, where Binh goes to work as a live in cook. GertrudeStein loves to be loved, and Miss Toklas does that quite well. She fusses over GertrudeStein and carefully types up her stories, caring for her almost like a mother hen. The two of them hold tea parties and invite the interesting artists of Paris over every week.

  • The Man on the Bridge

Binh meets the Man on the Bridge years before he meets GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas, in 1927. He is another Vietnamese man in Paris, who has been to many places and held various jobs in the past, including cook, kitchen boy, photograph retoucher, and letter writer on the Latouche Tréville. He is like the scholar-prince of Binh's dreams. Binh later discovers a photograph of this man, and discovers his name is Nguyen Ai Quoc – the same name Ho Chi Minh used when he was in France. In fact, Ho Chi Minh was in Paris for a brief period in 1927, and he worked on a boat named the Latouche Tréville. He also worked as a photograph retoucher for awhile. Although this is never explicitly stated in the book, these facts suggest that the Man on the Bridge was in fact Ho Chi Minh.

  • Sweet Sunday Man

The Sweet Sunday Man is an American mulatto iridologist who begins relations with Binh over the premise of having Binh prepare his Sunday dinners. Binh grows to love the man, ultimately culminating in disappointment when the Sweet Sunday man leaves Binh with only a photograph. The Sweet Sunday Man uses Binh more for personal interests than affections. Troung presents him as a Gertrude Stein aficionado, gaining an invitation to Gertrude Stein's salon due to the ambiguities of his status as a mulatto. The Sweet Sunday Man uses his guise as an American in high social standing to manipulate Binh into stealing one of Gertrude Stein's manuscripts, then abandoning him.

  • Binh's family and experiences in Vietnam
    • The Old Man is Binh's highly critical and abusive father. He also serves Binh's interior voice of criticism.
    • Binh's Mother is a highly maternal figure. She entered the marriage heavily impoverished; her mother and father recently deceased. She had only a pair of earrings, which were used to pay the midwife after Binh's birth.
    • Minh the Sous Chef is Binh's older brother who gets Binh the position in the kitchen teaching him both cooking and French. Through training Binh, the brother made Binh see that no matter how hard he worked he would never be more than a sous chef.
    • Chef Blériot is the head chef at the Governor-General's house. He is a Frenchman who takes up relations with Binh before Binh's ultimate dismissal when the relationship is discovered.

[edit] Themes and motifs

  • Photographs

Much of Binh’s story revolves around photographs. The book opens with him examining two pictures taken when his Mesdames leave for America. For both photos, Binh explains precisely what he is doing in the background of each. Later in the novel, Binh admires a photo of GertrudeStein donning a kimono. He finds this photo hidden away in the cabinet where GertrudeStein keeps her writing journals. Photography also surfaces when Sweet Sunday Man promises to get his photograph taken with Binh, only if Binh promises to give Sweet Sunday Man a copy of GertrudeStein’s work. Finally, the most valuable photograph becomes the one of the man on the bridge. After all, Binh decides to save his money for this photo, so he can purchase it from the photographer at a later date. Through this photograph, Binh also realizes the significant impact the evening with the man on the bridge had on Binh’s life. Because of this man, Binh finds a reason for staying in Paris. Thus, through photographs, Binh finds his identity by uncovering a purpose for his life. He uses the photographs to tell his life story, only after GertrudeStein has told her version of Binh’s life. Although Binh has not mastered the proper languages needed to counteract GertrudeStein’s story of Binh through the written word, Binh regains control over his own story by telling his tales through photographs. As a result, he shows that stories are just like pictures. There are many hidden meanings in each story and photograph, and the story or photograph presented does not always convey the full picture.

  • Colonialism

Since the novel takes place when Vietnam is still a part of French Indochina, the colonial presence is very strong throughout the book, affecting Binh's life both in Vietnam and as an immigrant in Paris. Binh's older brother Minh represents one extreme of the colonized person's response to the colonizer. Minh embraces French culture and, especially, the French language, believing it holds the ticket to social advancement. The Man on the Bridge, if he indeed is Ho Chi Minh, could be seen as the other extreme: resistance. Binh represents a position in between these two extremes, as he assimilates into the French colonial structure to, for example, find work, but retains a running critique in his mind of all that he sees, thus allowing for a sort of internal rebellion.

One off-shoot of colonialism, as put forth by Edward Said, is Orientalism, a system of studying, subjugating, and "othering" the Orient in order to set it off against the West. One result of Orientalism is that the Orient is seen as a collective whole, and differences between the groups that constitute the Orient are minimized. For example, Binh describes how in Paris he is simply seen as French Indochinese, with no effort being taken to ascertain if he is from Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia. Another issue is that Binh is constantly considered an exotic "other," worthy of study. This becomes apparent when Binh discovers a notebook written by GertrudeStein (entitled the Book of Salt) about him. The powerlessness felt by the colonized person is demonstrated by the fact that Binh can recognize his name countless times among the many words in the notebook, but since it is written in English, he does not know what is written about him. On the other hand, because the novel itself is written through the eyes of Binh, we are presented with a sort of reverse Orientalism. Binh, the "Oriental" narrator, turns the West into an object of study and critiques what he sees as its strange cultural practices, such as the Steins' pampering of their dogs.

  • Salt

As the title of the book suggests, salt is an important recurring image throughout the novel. Binh describes how salt can mean different things depending on where it comes from: kitchen, sweat, tears, or the sea. The word salary comes from the word salt, so salt is another way of saying labor, worth, value. Binh, after all, "is constantly made aware of his place in the household hierarchy."Ciuraru, Carmela. “Gertrude Stein's Cook.” Lambda Book Report. Vol. 11 Issue 7/8. Feb/Mar2003: 24-5. The book uses salt and its many connotations to connect themes of love and redemption. Food also adds to the meaning of salt in this context. Truong herself states that "Food or the preparation of food, at its best, is a profound act of intimacy."Quang Bao, Jim. “Profound Acts of Intimacy.” Lambda Book Report. Vol. 12 Issue ¾. Oct/Nov2003: 6-7. Salt also implies homosexuality in terms of the Biblical connotation of salt, in particular to the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for looking back at her home, to the city of Sodom. This is an implication that the Catholic God not only disapproves the activities of the Sodomites but also of nostalgia [1]

Since Binh was born and raised in Vietnam but currently resides in Paris, he can be described as a First Generation immigrant. He deals with many of the themes common amongst people in diaspora, including struggling to acquire a second language (in Binh's case, French), adapting to new social norms, and reaching out to other members from his same ethnic community (e.g. The Man on the Bridge). As a minority living in diaspora, Binh struggles to create an identity for himself which reconciles his new experiences and self-conception to to his past.

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