Essay: The Book of Salt

The Book of Salt written by Monique Truong expresses a narrative of main character Binh from Vietnam who ventures into his identity and his ability and love to cook. Through living in Paris, he cooks for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkas while being reminded of his past life in French-colonial Vietnam. Throughout the novel, both salt and food are seen as key aspects in Binh’s life. Salt, reminds him of his mother, reminds him of his hard work, is an addition to his food, and symbolizes the sea. But salt also enforces the idea and labor and worth. Food and food preparation both to Binh and Truong, express a side of intimacy but also when preparing it, shows how gendered making a meal can be depending on background. Because of Binh’s and Binh’s family race, culture, and class as intersectionality’s, complications in the book indicate how salt can be seen more than just a nostalgic symbol or friendly addition to food. And food preparation depending on society and rank, can indicate who should be making the food and who will deserve or win the credit. In The Book of Salt, Truong uses the idea of food preparation in the kitchen and the seasoning of salt, to introduce the perceptions of intersectional identities and differences between them including gender.
Salt, spices up food and makes it more flavorful. Binh, spices up his life by seasoning his dishes and serving them to people who also enjoy the flavor. Salt though, can also have a different meaning. Through one’s traits and characteristics regarding their background, like being Vietnamese, it can be inferred that labor was used to extract the salt for daily purposes.
Throughout the title and story told, The Book of Salt uses salt as a symbol of hard work but also desire. When we see Binh happy or relieved, he is usually referring to salt saying, “the taste of salt on my fingers” (Truong, 58). Salt may not represent a full meal, but it creates an impression on a dish and like Binh, a sense of desire and constant need for it in his life. Based on the characters intersectionality and gender, the assumption can be made that salt is a reference to exploitation and labor. In this section of the book, Binh also expresses how salt was found on his mother’s breast when he was young and still drinking from it. Her use of salt and his desire indicate the importance of salt to the Vietnamese people’s everyday lifestyle. Through hard work and sacrifice, salt is appreciated as a delicacy that brings sweetness to everyone’s life at the end of the day.
When understanding a specific category of food, how food is prepared has intersectional and gendered connotations. Women in many households around the world are seen first and foremost as caretakers including cooking and preparing a meal for the man of the house and rest of family. Most women are not paid for their work in the home. In The Book of Salt, Binh’s mother cooks to support the family and earn a living. But, the money she makes and the skills she learns from cooking are delegitimized by male characters in her family and in the society. Her money and techniques get snatched away by the men as a female should not be seen with having money or learning new cooking techniques. When looking at Binh and his brother, their contributions to the kitchen are highly desired and admired by all resulting in pay and reward. Because of the stereotype and persona of men dominating a work place, men reek the benefits in the end. When Binh uses his cooking skills abroad the ship, the old man gives him a hard time for the way he is preparing and making the food. According to the old man, Binh cooks like a woman and is seen as a female as Binh is being put in a traditionally woman-built position. Binh wants to challenge this norm and step out of having male dominated roles which should not make him any less of the person he is. Here it is easy to see how woman and men play very dominant roles in their society and how this translates to other societies today.
An interesting twist to food preparation is, the relationships built through food that brings Binh and his boss together while in the kitchen. Bleriot brings a different sort of relationship to the surface including discrimination towards Binh’s ethnicity and class, and the fact that Bleriot runs the kitchen while Binh is seen at a lower status. Binh uses his ability to cook and season food well to win over his love for Bleriot. When explaining this to his brother, Binh says “I did not waste the life you gave me…I traded it away for Bleriot’s lips” (Truong, 52). Between characters Gertrude Stein and Tolkas, Tolkas uses her femininity and food preparing skills to woo Gertrude Stein and give her the credit she deserves in the kitchen for her hard work. Stein explains “it is unfathomably erotic that the food she is about to eat has been washed, pared, kneaded, touched, by the hands of her lover” (Truong, 27). Food was able to strengthen their bond and strengthen Tolkas’s credibility in the kitchen. She was not undermined or dismissed but given love for it. This adds to their growing relationship at which they are both equals in terms of race, class and gender.
Within films, Laura Mulvey believes that each story told, has a male protagonist or hero per say. She also stands ground in saying that women are characterized as objects on display for desirable purposes while the male character succeeds. Women are portrayed as a sort of erotic buffer from the plot of the film and the male character. Mulvey says when expressing Sternberg’s Hitchcock film, “cinema builds the way [woman] is to be looked at into the spectacle itself,” (Mulvey, 841). Here she acknowledges how cinemas are surrounded by this patriarchal system that lets women not hold power. In relation to The Book of Salt, like films, many books and jobs are gendered. The food preparation and woman’s overall power is gendered and seen as passive or erotic. In Gertrude Stein and Tolkas’s situation specifically, Gertrude Stein uses and sees Tolkas as this erotic figure which in turn, makes her a disruption to men being dominant in jobs including working in the kitchen. Her natural beauty and attraction to GertrudeStein makes it appropriate for her to get the attention in the kitchen she deserves.
In The Book of Salt, the seasoning and connotations behind salt, and the way food and kitchen roles play a part in these characters life, shows a level of intersectionality and gender discrepancies. The characters diverse backgrounds, class status in society, and gender explains why when looking a food preparation, women do not credit for their work. Because of the culture regarding how women are supposed to be portrayed and how men gain all credit no matter what they have or have not done, women get left with staying in the home and doing as told. Only if a woman is pretty enough and gets the attention of a male, may her role be altered in her favor. And if a man were to perform a feminine traditional part, they are tortured and verbally abused by other men in society for not behaving or associating with their gender. Salt is also used throughout the book to show both desire and a sense of hard work within the characters. Not only is Binh using salt as a way to flavor his food and reminisce about his mother, it reminds him of the physical sweat and labor it comes with. Together, Truong not only expresses the problems or difficulties characters face with intersectionality and gender divides, but also uses every aspect of food to show both a loving and nurturing sensation it brings to the table.