"This soulfully moving memoir explores speaking truth through food as it shares a deeply personal story that shines an insightful light on migration, moving on, and love in many forms."
Beautifully written, lean and nourishing, Candice Chung’s Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You is an astute, moving and often amusing memoir that does a profoundly affecting dive into how rituals around family dining are used as a vehicle for expressing what we really want to say, and how we really feel: “A meal is a shape. It is a container into which we pour our cravings.”
Distant from her Cantonese parents, when food journalist Candice finds herself single after a decade in a relationship with a man they never met, she invites her parents to join her on trips to restaurants she’s commissioned to review in their Sydney home city.
Over time, over dozens of shared dinners, bridges are built, and love is shared, though the word itself is never spoken. Wise, generous and honest, Chung also ponders the observations of other writers and thinkers, and shares how she finds a new soulmate, “the geographer”, through the pandemic. And all the while, slowly but surely, shared experiences over food provide the language needed to express what she and her loved ones really mean to each other: “In Cantonese, the word cooked or ripen is also used to describe the closeness of a relationship. Close friends or family members will describe their bond this way, as in ‘we are very cooked’. I like the idea of waiting for intimacy to ripen. Some things can’t be rushed”.
Set to be loved by readers who relish reflective words that cut to the core of real life, and by those who yearn to feel closer to loved ones, Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You is a very special, enriching book.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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'If only my Cantonese parents weren't so allergic to the word love...'
What is the most unsayable thing you have ever wanted to say to your parents? For newly single food journalist Candice Chung, there's been one thing on her mind lately: 'If anything happens, I love you.' Simple. Reasonable. If only her estranged Cantonese parents weren't so allergic to the word 'love'.
Still, she's determined to tackle what's left unsaid. To find a way to unscramble what her family has been trying to tell each other all along – not in Cantonese or English, but with food.
As Candice dives into the rituals of family dining, and her parents offer to join her at restaurants she's due to review, she begins to unravel how a decade of silence and distance have shaped their relationship. Through shared meals and culinary adventures – from steaming hotpots to pasta at uncomfortably romantic trattorias – they begin to confront the unspoken. And to unpick what it means to show care when you come from a culture where saying 'I love you' isn't the norm.
Set against the backdrop of a burgeoning new relationship, grasped-at date nights mid-pandemic and an uncertain future across seas, Candice reflects on migration, solitude and intimacy.
How can we rebuild closeness when we've drifted apart?
Can food fill the gaps where words fail?
For anyone who has ever found their loved ones' emotional worlds unreachable, Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You is packed with heart, humour and those bright-hearted moments around a dinner table that bring us together.
The next word-of-mouth obsession for readers of Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, Butter by Asako Yuzuki and I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee.
Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You features in the following genres: Star Books, Biographies & Autobiographies, Cookery, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Biography, Literature and Literary studies, Memoirs
Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You is available in Paperback, Hardback
Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You was written by Candice Chung and published by Elliott & Thompson
Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You has 256 pages
£15.29
