52 pages • 1 hour read
The Book of Salt
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
The Book of Salt is a 2003 novel by Monique Truong. Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the novel focuses on Binh, a young, gay Vietnamese cook in French-colonized Vietnam. Binh flees Saigon, and after spending time at sea as a cook, he lands in Paris and eventually answers an ad for a position in the household of Gertrude Stein and her lover/companion, Alice B. Toklas.
Binh navigates the limitations of colonialism while exploring his emerging identity during a time of unusual freedom and creativity in Paris when Stein’s home became a magnet for luminaries of the Lost Generation, a famed group of writers and artists that included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and EE Cummings. Binh observes the characters who come and go while cooking for Stein, Toklas, and their guests. Throughout the book, Binh struggles with emotions, imagining arguments with his father and trying to manage his habits of self-mutilation and heavy drinking.
Truong based her fictionalized account of the famous literary couple on a passage in the real-life Toklas’s cookbook that mentions two Indochinese cooks, one of whom answered a classified ad for the position. The novel explores themes of Racial and Sexual Identity, Unlock all 52 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
