Food as a Language to Connect Wo

Truong’s The  Book of Salt  makes readers think about many social problems in our society groups,like how our world accepts homophobia, racism and sexism. Her story’s main character Binh is a gay man, for this reason, he lost his job in his hometown Vietnam. In that time, his society could not give him acceptance for partner ships with a man.  Unfortunately, gay marriage in the story is impossible for people to accept in the year 1929, even Binh’s dad was angry that he was in love with a man. In the book Binh says: “My dea rand violent ‘father’” (Truong 12). This shows his dad was unhappy about Binh being a gay man. He feels sad because of all the discrimination against him about his homosexuality. According to Truong’s  The Book of Salt,   “ ‘Thin Bin, how would you define ‘love’?’ Ah, I think, a classic move from the material to the spiritual. Gertrude Stein, like the collectors who have preceded her, wants to see the stretch marks on my tongue, I taste a familiar drop of bitter in the back of my throat. I point to a table on which several quinces sit yellowing in a blue and white china bowl. I shake my head in their direction, and I leave the room, speechless” (Truong 36). From this quotation we can see the main character Binh is very sad and struggling with his sexual identity, he doesn’t know how to talk about this kind of love. The love for him is bitter and sweet, but he cannot let anyone know. It means no one will wish him well. Truong says, “Sorrow, even when tempered by sweat and toil into a whisper weight of gold, is still sorrow” (242). Because he is a gay man, in fact, the situation is so difficult to live in his hometown. No one will give him a job, he cannot go home, his dad will kill him, and no one likes him. Binh’s identity is not able to grow in his hometown, which his dad reminds him,saying, “‘Unemployed and alone’ the Old Man surmises, distilling my life into two sad, stinging words” (Truong 12). He runs away from home to work on a ship to be a cook, a choice that allows him to be himself, but his dad gets very angry and says, “No son of mine leaves a good job at the governor-General’s to be a cook! A cook on some leaky boat for sailors who don’t even know how to say ‘please’or ‘thank you’ in their own language, not to mention in French. Old whores become cooks on boats, not any son of mine” (12). Binh buries his sad emotion seven though he feels lost—no words, no anger, no tears, he keeps his head down to cover himself for a gay man. Everyone who looks at him thinks something is wrong in his mind. He does not have a choice except to leave his native place and move to France. No matter which way he goes he still needs to face many problems. Even far away in Paris, the sex, gender, culture and language problems stay with him.Even in Paris where Binh thinks he can be free, people still believe men and women falling in love with each other is the normal thing for people to do. Binh changes recipes and continues feeling lost because he is different from the expectations. But Binh in the other way, a gay man. He misses "the man on the bridge." Cooking gives the main character Binh power to overcome all the problems.Food as a language builds him stronger and stronger to solve all the problems or anything he needs to face. No matter if he cannot speak French or English, he can express himself fluently through the language of food. Also, food like alanguage lets Binh connect to the world. According to The Book of Salt, “A good cook is a great commodity in this city. Any city, really. Ask yourself, ‘Where do they not eat?’ and my point is made. Cooking is the answer to a universally placed classified ad. It allows me to live like a migrating bird, a fish in a barrier less sea” (Truong 189). Binh a cook, connects the community through his food; the food he prepares represents his culture background, also mixes his own culture in the food he prepares. Same as bell hooks idea about culture with the food, thought the food when you are eating the food, from the food to transform to our language and culture. All the sweet memory about learn to be a cook from his mother and his old brother, which associated with mother and old brother to show they love, that’s family about. All this love can comfort him when he feels lonely and hurting. Binh forever to remember this love, It to be a cook about his mother to “Rice, coated with butter, threaded through with silver-green sage, will serve as a fine accompaniment…Butter sauces, sauces,saffron and peas, onions, truffles and creams, all deserving, deem the French,to share in their occasional bed of rice” (Truong 78). Too many bad memories affect Binh by making him feel like an outsider wherever he goes; however, heremembers food with happiness. These memories of food are the ones he chooses to carry with him and share with others. The language of the food as good memories will with him to overcome all the problems.

Binh and Chargeing Elk are both outsiders,without language, culture, and social connections. They are both lost in France, without any one to help them. The language makes both people feel disconnected from Paris, but also from their identities and pasts.The Book of Salt’s main character Binh is much better before he comes to France, he learns from his mother and his older brother how to cook many kinds of food, even French food, also he works at a French style kitchen in Vietnam. For this reason, he can use this skill to find a job to support himself, also, through his food as a language he can communicate with society. Binh and Chargeing Elk are both struggling and experiencing conflicts in their new country. James welch’s Heartsong of Charging Elk is a story about one American Indian man who joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to travel to France, his name is Chargeing Elk. This American Indian man has no money: “Changing Elk is not a vagrant. He is an important member of the Wild West show who had the misfortune to fall ill in your city, a victim of thein fluenza epidemic. Now he wishes nothing more than to repatriate with his American comrades, who are performing in Rome” (Welch 79).  Now Chargeing Elk is an American Indian lost in France, he does not speak French or English, no one can understand him. In France most people are white, so France is a stranger land to him, without the French language it is more difficult for him to understand what he should do, he confuses everything around him, he is a person lost in a stranger country. Without any language, “Charging Elk had left the hospital and was nowhere to be seen. It had surmised Bell that Charging Elk, sick with influenza, and with two broken ribs on top of that,could disappear so completely during the four days he had been on the loose” (Welch77). Charging Elk is not like Binh, who is a cook, and can use his skill to support himself to survive. Charging Elk has a difficult situation to face to his language problems,

He had finally met an Indian, but not in the heat of battle; rather, he had met a poor wretch in a shabby coat didn’t fit him and hospital slippers that were soaked through; he was alone in a country where he could not speak the local language, and worse, he couldn’t speak the language of his own country. He would sit in a French jail for at least four days until the Christmas weekend was over, and maybe longer, given the crowded nature of the French courts. So much or the romanticism of youth. This Indian was thoroughly defeated. (Welch 83) Welch’s story is rich in cultural crossing, this cultural crossing makes the main character Charging Elk alone in France, he has a serious injury and needs to stay in the hospital, the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show should move on to the next show and needs to continue to Rome. When he woke up in the hospital,he felt he was in a strange place, alone in an unfamiliar city, everything upside down. He did not know anyone and learned everything from zero. He struggles to

adapt to the new culture and language as well as he cannot know what he should do, he only has old memories of his hometown. He ran away from the hospital, he dreams of how he can find a way to go back to America, “He would work hard for the fishmonger and earn enough money to pay for his trip home. He would wait until he had many France; then he would find Brown Suit or Yellow Breast or the pale man with the spectacles who bought fish down at the water’s edge. One of them would help him find a fire boat that would take him across to America” (Welch170).  When he opens his eyes, he still needs to find a way to fit in to the new culture. For him cultural crossing is big challenge. As we know, anyone who leaves their home country needs to learn a new language and new culture. Fitting in can help people to achieve their dreams.

Charging Elk learns how to survive through the hardships way, through the suffering he wants to learn, “Charging Elk often wished he could read.Sometimes he bought illustrated magazines to look at the pictures, but when he tried to figure out what was being said of them…who told him that the magazine said that all the bison were gone, all left of them was bones and memories.Mathias was alarmed at this thought, because he had been thinking of going to America with Charging Elk” (Welch 196). He began to learn the local language and learn how to read, also he wanted to learn the new culture, but he did not want to forget his own culture. He hopes to carry on both cultures when he has the chance to go back to his hometown. Language is the power tool to help Charging Elk fit in to the new society, it also can help him communicate with the people he works with.

Charging Elk finds a way to fit in, “Charging Elk started work at the soap factory three sleeps later” (Welch 188). Elk finds a job in France, but he always thinks about when he was in his hometown, “Charging Elk had been on the job for eight months. It had been difficult to leave the fishmonger’s world, but he had realized that he was becoming almost a child to the Soulases when he had lived his own youth as a man, independent and free of any authority” (187). He can have food as a language to identify people’s culture. Charging Elk misses his hometown, sometimes his mind is full of when he was young. Any way he works, “He had been full of high hopes then—the thought of earning enough money to go home” (Welch 189). He wants to go home, but the job pays him very little and he cannot pay “for a ticket on ship, then the train he would have to take across America” (Welch189). Food is such a powerful connection to home for Charging Elk, when he thinks about home, the food and drink are associated with his mother and father. He has been a way form home for so long, he does not know what is waiting for him. Despite wanting to return home, Charging Elk also questions if he should return: “His mother would hug him and cry and hold him close, then make him a big meal of roasted beef and the potatoes they were now undoubtedly planting. His father would also hug him, then tell him all about High Runner as they sat and drank pejuta sapa” (Welch 193). Food acts as a language to connect people’s family and culture; sometimes mother’s foods mean the world for her children. Food represents warm home and carry on family history. As we know through sharing of a meal to pass on love between the family members builds a strong relationship with each other. Charging Elk learns to cross cultural boundaries through sharing meals with the Soulases: “He ordered theroti de porc because he recognized “roast” and “pork.” …Madeleine’s fish dishes, especially those with crisp skin and firm white meat, but he never ate fish on his own. He had as mall oil burner but the only time he used it was when he could afford a piece of beef” (Welch 197).Food allows culture to bond together while also preserving sweet the memories about home. Food as a language to show of love. Both characters are lost in France, because they don’t know local language. While Binh and Charging Elk struggle with the language problems, food allows both men to learn how to fit in with the new culture. Both men create new identities through the food.