Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Noi is Bich’s grandmother, who was born in 1920, in Hanoi. As a girl, she attended a French academy and had her teeth dyed black in a traditional beauty ritual. At twenty, she meets and marries a man who owns an import business. They have four sons and are well-off enough to afford a nanny for each boy. Noi’s son, Chu Quan, dies in combat, and she is affected profoundly by his death.

As Vietnam sped towards partition, the North Vietnamese targeted educators, writers, and businesspeople. Noi’s family lost their wealth and turned to prioritizing survival. Her husband, Bich’s grandfather, is taken and tortured for nonexistent ties to the Communist Party. Just before the partition, they flee to Saigon, and Noi leaves behind her brothers and sisters, who she won’t see again for another forty years. Noi sells pho on the streets and spends time meditating at the local temples. Her husband falls into a depression and then dies of a heart attack.

Noi is the head of the house and the driving force of stability in Bich and Anh’s lives. She takes care of the children and involves them in her many rituals. Eventually, Bich moves into her room. When Bich has insomnia, Noi cuts her slices of fruit, to calm her. Noi makes food for the family each day and leaves out a plate for their ancestors during every meal. She often visits the nearby Buddhist temples and is a community leader there. Noi is the heart of Vietnamese culture for Bich and maintains many of the family's cultural traditions. At the end of the memoir, Noi, Bich, and Chu Anh travel to Vietnam where Noi sees her family for the first time in forty years.

Bich’s father’s name is not revealed during the memoir. He was born in Vietnam, and his father died when he was eleven. He meets Bich’s mother at a cafe, and they hit it off. Their tumultuous relationship leads to the births of Anh and Bich, but they never live together. In 1975, he chooses to leave her behind and take the girls and the rest of his family to the United States.

Bich’s father works at North American Feather for much of the book. He spends his free time fixing up his Mustang and going to parties. Two years after they arrive in Grand Rapids, Bich’s father meets Rosa at a New Year’s party, and they marry a year later. Soon after, Vinh is born. Bich’s father’s relationship with Rosa is chaotic and lacks communication; they divorce and later remarry.

Bich’s father has big ideas but does not always execute them. He throws a big party but doesn’t break even; he starts projects on the house but doesn’t finish them. His gambling and drinking become a problem, and at one point, he steals money from Bich. When he is confronted, he yells at her that he has done everything for her, and she takes this to heart.

Throughout the memoir, he doesn’t seem aware of how his behavior affects his family, or to be concerned with Bich’s internal life. They do share a deep love of snacking, however, and many of Bich’s memories have to do with his eating habits.

Rosa is Bich’s stepmother, a Mexican-American ESL teacher, and the daughter of migrant workers. After attending college and starting work as a teacher in Grand Rapids, she gets pregnant out of wedlock and has her daughter, Chrissy. Her parents are very strict Catholics, and she becomes distanced from her family when she gets pregnant. Because of her family’s rejection and religion, Rosa rejects Catholicism and becomes an atheist.

Rosa is also a very committed leftist activist. She admires Cesar Chavez and takes her children to the picket line when their teachers are on strike. At one point, she has the family boycott fruits and vegetables from farms that exploit their laborers and owns a button that reads “Down With Grapes!” Though she is liberal politically, she is very conservative when it comes to what she will discuss with the kids. She and Bich’s father do not talk about her pregnancy, nor do they talk about the absence of Bich’s mother and Chrissy’s father.

Rosa is strict but loving. She is described through much of the memoir as a difficult stepmother. In the end, though, Bich comes to terms with the beauty of her family life and recognizes that Rosa did the best she could with what she had.

Anh is Bich’s sister. She is a year and four months older than Bich. She and Bich are both good-natured, but beyond that, they are very different. Anh is tall and pretty and is thereby accepted into the “tribe of girlhood” with Chrissy much faster than Bich is, which Bich resents. She is fierce and much quicker to threaten the girls’ racist bullies than her sister. She and her sister experience much of their childhood side-by-side, and she is Bich's co-conspirator in the Vander Wal break-in. As they get older, Anh becomes more interested in makeup and boys, and she and Bich become more distant. Bich writes, “on [a] summer day she blocked me from the bathroom, then and there ending the baths we always taken. I knew she had gotten a pass to move forward" (41). Though Anh is a constant presence, we never really see the world through Anh’s eyes, and thus don’t know much about her, apart from her role in Bich’s life.

Chrissy is Bich’s stepsister and Rosa’s daughter. Her father is absent for much of her childhood, but she meets him and her grandparents in Chapter 10. Chrissy is the antithesis of Bich. While Bich is introverted and passive, Chrissy is abrasive and unapologetic. Chrissy often makes fun of Bich and Anh for their culture, but they still look up to her.

As Anh gets older, she and Chrissy become closer, bonding over makeup and clothing. Chrissy is the first to become a teenager, and Bich is fascinated by observing her growth. She becomes more and more rebellious as the years go on, dating a boy named Kenny and stealing from her mother. Bich sees Chrissy smoking in a parking lot on one of her Girl Scout troop’s outings, and later Anh tells her that Chrissy has been shoplifting.

Jennifer Vander Wal is Bich’s next door neighbor, friend, and sometimes-enemy. Jennifer’s father, Cal, is a music teacher, and her mother is a stay-at-home-mom who occasionally gives piano lessons. Jennifer is a year younger than Bich, but taller, “her manners mimicking an adult’s” (62). The Vander Wals are devout Christians, and much of Bich’s religious exploration involves Jennifer in some way. One year, for Bich’s birthday, Jennifer gives her a piece of paper folded into a cube that, when opened, reads “God’s Son.”

Bich feels distanced from herself when she is with Jennifer, but it all returns when she enters back into her home. There is a double standard with the two girls; Jennifer calls Bich’s stepmother Rosa, while Bich calls Jennifer’s mother Mrs. Vander Wal. Bich has to be invited into the kitchen in Jennifer’s house, while Jennifer just walks into Bich’s space. Bich is obsessed with the food Jennifer eats at home, and Jennifer will not even try Noi’s food.

One summer, when the Vander Wals are on vacation, Bich and Anh break into their house and trash Jennifer’s room. The girls are caught and forced to apologize to Jennifer, and within a week, things between Bich and Jennifer are back to normal.

Holly Jansen is Bich’s friend from school. She is tall and blond. They become close because they have the best cursive in their class and are allowed to study in the hallway together. Holly always has the best school lunches and shares them with Bich. Regarding her friendship with Holly, Bich writes, “Holly and I were drawn to each other not just by proximity but by our shared desire to be orderly and perfect” (86). The two girls also bond about being the only ones in their class whose parents voted Democrat. Bich learns to use a fork and knife after trying and failing at eating pork chops at Holly’s house.

Bich becomes friends with Loan because they are the only two Vietnamese students in their first-grade class. Bich goes to Loan’s house for dinner. Her parents are tense and angry, and they share a meal of a small frozen pizza. Bich sees, through Loan, a different version of being VietnameseAmerican.

Chu Anh is Bich’s uncle. He marries Rosa’s friend, Shirley, and is in college studying engineering at the beginning of the book. Later, he is living in Atlanta with Shirley and their two sons. In the last chapter, he goes with Bich and Noi to Vietnam.

Chu Cuong is Bich’s uncle, and Chu Dai is his best friend. They live with her family until Rosa moves them to the house with the enclosed pool. Chu Cuong and Chu Dai are both bachelors and workers at a jewelry plant. They take Bich to McDonald’s and give her and Anh money for the ice cream trucks. They are a representation of liberation to Bich; they listen to the music they like and watch the television they want, which Bich admires and envies.