True Grit: & Deep Waters: A Close Reading of The Good Life Elsewhere

    

 Glancing across a river in Saint Petersburg, Russia. June 2013.

Note: This post contains a spoiler for Vladimir Lorchenkov's The Good Life Elsewhere

If you had told me when I was a kid that I would go to Russia one day, I probably would have cocked my eyebrow and given you a dubious look. I guess the reservation I had was part of my conditioning of "world travel" growing up: places like Italy, Greece, Australia, and Japan looked much more inviting than...Russia. Now, seven years later, I can say that my privilege was checked and my eyes were opened to the culture and history that surrounds Russia outside of U.S. borders. If I think hard enough, I can still remember the grit that pressed into my hands and under my fingernails as I took the above picture. But this post isn't about St. Petersburg or Russia. It's about the citizens of a city that's pproximately 1580-ish kilometers (around 980 miles) slightly southwest of St. Petersburg: Larga, Moldova. This is the city where The Good Life Elsewhere begins.

My jaw strained under the pressure of the grotesque and dark comedy grinding themselves together in Vladimir Lorchenkov’s The Good Life Elsewhere. As I read each chapter, my teeth would unconsciously begin to press together; after a few minutes I’d start to feel a strain in my lower left jaw that would throb until I finished each chapter. As my jaw throbbed, he events and characters and narrator would grind their emotions and problems into my mind in kind, resulting in a prominent ache in my mouth that has lasted for days.

Lorchenkov’s use of the grotesque was effective, so much so that I kept having flashbacks to my trip to Russia in June of 2013. Moscow's bleak sky matched the seemingly dark and reserved nature that staggers throughout Lorchenkov’s novel, while images of the people, sights, and streets of Saint Petersburg honed in when I read about Seraphim's "Italy, [his] Italy." As Russia and Italy have overlapping personalities and characteristics as a city, so too does The Good Life Elsewhere and its perception of Moldova; the distortion provided by the grotesque allows us to see the villagers of Larga struggle, rejoice, survive, and suffer. Many believe that the novel is a dark comedy on migration, the Moldova-Russia conflict, and Western perceptions of Eastern Europe. I'll admit there were a few times that I laughed at how horrifying and crafty and ironic the novel was--especially when airplanes and submarines were involved--but I'm unsure if I could say the novel made me laugh as a whole. 

If I had to use one word to summarize The Good Life Elsewhere, I'd have to pick grit. Grit is as multi-faceted as the people who use it in order to accomplish something. And, grit is a constant grind we encounter in the novel as we see Seraphim, Vasily, and others make their attempts to migrate to Italy with the same fear: "And what if things start improving here as soon as we get there?" There's the physical grit and grime and strain that the characters endure until the last page, and there's also the mental grit we readers must endure to begin sympathizing with their desperation. There's the grotesque images of imprisonment, starvation, marital strife, and suicide, and there's the grotesque conversations of swindling, lost hope, and dark, dark humor.

The book cover of The Good Life Elsewhere

Make no mistake, there were many moving passages in this novel that invoked raw courage and pain; but, there's a certain point in Lorechenkov's dark comedy where I saw grit and deep waters come hand-in-hand. The moment I'm writing about lies within Chapter 43 and focuses on Vasily's long-term relationship with the sky and, more recently, the water.

The passage begins this way:

Vasily Lungu had found peace, and without hindrance or obstacle was floating with the river's tide toward the Black Sea. From there he began his doleful water voyage, carried by the waves of the sea toward Italy, where his dead body was aiming. Along the way, Vasily was greatly changed. His hair had grown by several meters during the course of his journey and now it ranged across the face of the drowned man like the tentacles of a strange sea creature. 

Throughout the entire novel, like everyone else, Vasily is struggling--and that's putting things lightly. His relationship with his parents, his hobbies, his loved ones, and his country churn into one another and test his emotional limits. At times, he seems to persevere through the pain; in others, he is carried forward by the waves of his grief or determination of others, like Seraphim. We see him here without his mental and emotional baggage from Moldova but instead carrying the permanent yet grating features of death. It's haunting, yet somehow fitting considering the amount of grit he put into pushing back against the strict regime of the dismantled USSR; of the flighty successes of migration; of the deaths of others.

The author continues etching Vasily's trek in deep waters:

His fingernails had stratified into twenty layers so that Vasily's hands looked like the fins of a mythical merman. The Southern European's skin, brown and tightly wound across his cheekbones, had whitened, like the finest linen, and stretched, so that Vasily's face took on the placid look that one loses at birth. His nostrils fluttered with the rhythms of the water which filled it, and his body slackened.

It is as if the water is a driving force that gives the pain and frustration with searching for Italy and freedom a more graceful end. This is the specific part of the passage that moved me so deeply; I tiptoe around death, around the pain that surrounds those who lose loved ones, and this novel blatantly puts death in front of you with a firm statement: we should be grateful for our struggles but more understanding of the situations that are still resulting in horrific deaths and much suffering--like immigration. The men, women, and children who cross waters and borders to reach new lives or start again must undergo the risk of being given a watery grave, as Vasily was. The passage ends in this way:

And finally, Vasily was at rest, after these thirty-five years of his life. His face relaxed, and Vasily forgot how he'd looked in his lifetime. Little fish nibbled at his arms; crabs pierced his spine.

If you chose to read further, you'd see what continues to happen on Vasily's watery voyage. I stopped the passage here because I want you to make the choice of whether to read on or not.

I won't lie to you--people die in this novel. But people also persevere and relish in that happiness that simmered slowly from suffering, as Vasily did. He showed true grit, both in and out of deep waters. I can't say that I would have done the same in his situation.

Can you?

Examining The Book of Salt as a Migrant Narrative

The Book of Salt by Monique Truong is a narrative centered around Binh, a gay Vietnamese cook who explores the world (French-colonized Vietnam and Paris) and reveals his perspective with his stream of consciousness and a constant inner struggle with his father’s unmet expectations. While the novel brings out many interesting characteristics through the narrator's thoughts, Binh’s troublesome relationship with his father, his distinguishable cultural and linguistic differences with his employers, and the expressive connection to food evidently mark the unique qualities of a migrant person in Truong’s work.

As Binh narrates his experiences, he thinks quite a lot about his father, the “Old Man.” The way that Binh refers to the Old Man is as if he is a ghost who continues to traumatize and haunt him. Although Binh and the Old Man are physically distant, Binh’s thoughts show that the Old Man is still part of his present moment as he argues with his father in his head. The expectations of a Vietnamese father who is deeply catholic is clear when the Old Man shouts, “Old whores become cooks on boats, not any son of mine” (12). The Old Man negates not only his son’s sexual identity and his career choice but also Binh’s identity and his very existence. The hatred and shame of his son are consistent through the book as the Old Man states, “It sickens me to think about what you do, shaming my name” (193). These abusive comments reflect the irreconcilable relationship the two have. Moreover, even though Binh wants to believe that the Old Man is dead to him, he cannot escape his father’s shadows. He is haunted by the hurtful comments that are inside his head. Binh points out, “Every day, I hear the Old Man’s voice shouting at me from beneath the earth, where, I tell myself, he now lies” (193). Binh goes on further to say to his father in his head that “This is my story. I will tell it, and you will lie there mute” (Truong, 196). This shows that Binh is desperately trying to rid himself of his father by treating him as if he did not exist at all, but struggles from eliminating him. 

Another aspect of the novel that reflects the migrant experience is the cultural and linguistic distinctions that Binh points out through his narrative. In an early part of the novel, Binh states “all my employers provide me with a new moniker” (32). One of his employers, GertrudeStein calls him “Thin Bin.” While she does this “merrily” and might not mean any particular harm (from her perspective), this purposeful mispronunciation and desire to rhyme in English Binh’s very name exemplifies the underlying theme of colonization. The white-dominant American does not even make an effort to understand or learn about a different language or culture. Even though Binh wishes to hear his name said correctly, he does not get to hear it because his employers do not bother to meet him in the middle despite his limited French.

Last but certainly not least, Binh uses food analogies to strongly portray his alienated experiences as a foreigner and a colonized subject. Among the foods Binh mentions, salt is one that consistently reappears from the title of the novel to the end of the narrative. According to Binh, salt is symbolic of and part of many things: labor, desire, sea, tears, and food. Binh directly notes the multidimensional aspect of salt with his life experiences (as a cook, on the sea, and in his tumultuous relationship with his father) can reflect with all of these points. Furthermore, salt complements his life as it “enhances the sweetness” of a meal (185). In this way, it seems as though Binh is describing his life as a whole in which his moments that reflect the “salt” amplifies his sweeter moments in life. All the while, Binh’s descriptions of food are helpful as he himself works with food and is a cook. 

Overall, Truong uses various rhetorical elements to produce a distinct and personal migrant narrative in The Book of Salt. She captures the inner struggles of a queer Vietnamese man who is disowned by his father. Truong recognizes the external discomfort and wishful thinking of Binh to be called by his real name. And she connects Binh’s dynamic life experiences through symbolic food elements. In this way, The Book of Salt evokes a sense of alienation a minority or foreigner might feel, but it does so in a way that makes it specific to the narrator. Perhaps, Truong purposefully balanced the emotions of the narrative and the experiences of the narrator not as a collective experience of any Vietnamese migrant but a singular experience of Binh that allows the reader to deeply connect with particular points of the story.

Works Cited

Truong, Monique. The Book of Salt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Print.

A Critical Analysis of Animality within Monique Truong's The Book of Salt

 The Book of Salt: A Novel by Monique Truong, is centered around a gay, Vietnamese cook who lands in Paris and becomes the household chef for Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice B. Toklas. Although the themes and interest of the novel appear anthropocentric in nature- race, sexuality, historicism, diaspora, and postcoloniality- the presence of animals threaded and woven into the novel demonstrate a perversion of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism that contribute to broader themes within novel. At the beginning of the novel, Bihn, the protagonist, walks the reader through the moving process- from France to America- taken by his two American Mesdames in Paris, and describes the process of choosing which “cargo” to take with them and which cargo would be acceptable in America: “When my Mesdames first began preparing for the journey, they had wanted to bring Basket and Pépé along with them. The SS Champlain gladly accommodated dogs and assorted pets, just as long as they were accompanied by a first-class owner. The problem, however, was America.” Then the protagonist goes on a page later to compare himself to the poodle: “Every morning, my Mesdames insisted on washing Basket in a solution of sulfur water. . . . I could wash and dress myself, thank you. Though, like Basket, I too had a number of admirers.” These two excerpts, as well as a few others I will introduce throughout, demonstrate the protagonist’s conscientiousness (and I argue the conscientiousness of all non-white humans during that time period) towards being treated much like the house pet- where worth is tied to animal-like servitude and the “animal” is at the mercy of their human. Animals are used to illustrate the construction of subjectivity and identity in a postcolonial era. 

I wish not to imply, or in any way, want to suggest that immigrants, migrants, or non-whites are animals. Instead, this analysis aims to point out that non-whites, such as Bihn, found a comfortable, safe, and intimate space within society by managing a delicate balance between human and animal in the eyes of their employers. I mentioned earlier that this is a perversion of zoomorphism- giving animal qualities to humans- and anthropomorphism- attributing human characteristics to animals-however, both and neither are taking place in the novel. The Mesdames are treating Bihn in much the same way people treat their cats and dogs. It is not that Bihn himself is an animal displaying human qualities or visa-versa, it is that his Stein and Toklas do not differentiate the treatment of Bihn from that of the dogs- well, actually, the treatment of the dogs might be better. There is a long history of non-whites being seen as animals. James Baldwin, in Stranger in the Village, imagines the first sighting of black men by Europeans and at “the promptness with which they decided that these black men were not really men but cattle.” Tejo Cole, in his article “Black Bodies: Rereading James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village,” remarks on words that haunt him in a 1821 essay written by William Hazlett called “The Indian Jugglers,” where he describes the men he sees as “wonderful animal[s].” Anyone reading this blog, I assume, already knows that people with brown skin were not considered human beings, but instead, commodities to be bought and sold for a profit. Although Bihn is not ‘bought and sold’ in the way slaves were, he is also not treated entirely as a full and functioning human due to his immigrant status. 

Throughout the novel, Truong reveals the pet-like treatment of Bihn through microaggressions around his name, sexuality, and servitude. 

The pet will be loved and adored as long as it remains in 

servitude to its owner- without a voice, but always listening;

without security, but always protecting. 

Early in the novel, Bihn notes that “none of them...has called me by my given name” because they don’t care- the owner/employer has already named him “Thin Bihn”; a name given to him by Gertrude Stein because she did not care to learn how to properly pronounce his real name- a name never revealed to the reader. On the surface, the act is endearing- parents name their new babies and pet owners name their pets. The act solidifies the union between the humans. It’s both ownership and belonging. A deeper look however, reveals the naming and renaming of Bihn as equal to the African American erasure of names that tied them to their culture. By giving Bihn his “American name,” as he calls it in the novel, they are removing him from his culture and ‘otherness’. 

There really is no better demonstration of the interest in the animality of Bihn than when, during a trip to Bilignin, an intoxicated guest asks Bihn “Are you circumcised?” and Bihn internally asks “Why do they always ask this question?” The narrator, Bihn, goes on to say “I could only assume that their curiosity about my male member is a by-product of their close association with animal husbandry. Castrating too many sheep could make a man clinical and somewhat abrupt about such things.” Bihn’s reasoning leads him to believe that the guest, when comparing his (the guest) own humanness against another living thing, saw the same “otherness” in Bihn that he sees in sheep, and therefore, did not find it uncouth to ask about his manhood. As a matter of fact, as Bihn points out, no one seems to find it odd because he is asked on several occasions. Dog breeders also find it easy to ask about the manhood or womanhood of a dog bread and asking if an animal is “fixed” is commonplace. A question like, “Did anyone ask the animal if it wants to be fixed or discuss it?” moves me into the mindset of Jacques Derrida on the ontology of animals. Here, the reader is taken right back to Baldwin’s “men are not men but cattle” reference because people do not discuss such private, intimate details within rooms full of people; however, those people will discuss private matters out loud about animals and “others.” Bihn’s response, to look up at the harvest moon and walk away, supports Julia Kristeva’s take on the aloofness of foreigners as a defense mechanism in the book Strangers to Ourselves, in the chapter titled “Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner”, by stating, “Indifference is the foreigner’s shield. Insensitive, aloof, he seems, deep down, beyond the reach of attacks and rejections that he nevertheless experiences with the vulnerability of a medusa. Truong further supports the theory of non-privacy for “others” in her description of the grey-city bird dying in the presence of gawking and prodding children and adults. They gather and watch the intimate act of death and mock the bird’s attempts to survive despite it’s broken wing. In “Where Have All the Natives Gone?: The Inauthentic Native”, the author describes the act of watching as “the primary agency of violence” because it creates the “passive victim on display,” , naked, which both perfectly describes people watching the helpless bird die and to people watching the public humiliation and dehumanization of Bihn with questions that leave him vulnerable and figuratively naked, or undress, in the presence of others. 

There is another section of the novel that describes the way Miss Toklas inspects Bihn’s hands everyday, the way a dog owner inspects the paws and nails of a purebred animal before a show. She even affectionately calls him by his breed- her “Little Indochinese”- and the narrator points out that she most likely identifies him in this way when she is angry and mocks the possessive “her” she adds to the beginning of the name. There is also a little dig at who is the native when the narrator says “we Indochinese belong to the French. You two may live in France, but you are still Americans,” which still deems the immigrant as someone who belongs to someone. The question of nativism leads me to my last point- can the pet ever return “home?”

It is often said that a domesticated animal cannot return to its original home because it no longer knows how to survive in that environment. With that in mind, I turn to Bihn and to the American madames who are all faced with returning “home.” Home for Toklas and Stein, American, does not present as much of a conundrum because they retained so much of their “Americanness” while in France, and were known for it. On the other hand, Bihn, who was essentially kicked out of his home, does not view his childhood house as a home. “We swore we would not die under the eaves of his house” is a mantra repeated by Bihn as he reflects on the death of his beloved mother, which demonstrates that “home” is not a place he identifies with, especially since his only real connection to “home,” his mother, is gone. For some immigrants, home is a construct and home can be established wherever they choose. This seems to be the case for Bihn who describes himself as a migratory bird. 

Even now, I do not know for sure if zoomorphism or anthropocentrism are the right terms to describe the relationship between Bihn and his employers, however, there is certainly a connection between their treatment and Bihn animality. 

A Close Reading of Chapter 13 of Monique Truong "The Book of Salt": Getting Lost in Bilignin

Photo by Adele Payman on Unsplash

Have you ever gotten separated from your family? Lost from the group you were traveling with? Intentionally lost yourself in a moment, a person or something else? Felt lost not because of your geographic location but because you were completely out of your element? I have a confession. Lately, I have experienced that sensation of being out of my element. That feeling of being in a foreign environment. And try as I might, it isn’t something that I have been able to shake. I haven’t moved. I’m not in a foreign country. But, I recently started graduate school and while the experience of going to college isn’t new, or even taking graduate level classes, I still feel a bit out of my element. 

I was reading a book called “The Book of Salt” by Monique Truong recently. Published in 2003, the novel opens in 1934. Truong introduces us to Binh, a Vietnamese cook who relocates to Paris from Saigon. At this time, Saigon was a French colony. In the opening chapters, we find that in Paris, Binh becomes a live-in cook for two Mesdames (plural of Madame – I had to look it up).

As Binh, who serves as narrator, shares his story, we find that he was hired after responding to a newspaper ad: “Two American ladies wish to retain a cook —27 rue de Fleurus. See the concierge.” 

It turns out that the two American ladies he would work for would be Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Stein being the American playwright, novelist and poet. Ms. Toklas, her companion. 

With Binh's internal dialogue, Truong builds an imaginary story of one of Stein and Toklas’ real-life Vietnamese servants, a migrant, a drifter who left home at 20. We join Binh’s story when he has worked for the Mesdames for half a decade and must decide if he wants to travel with his Mesdames as they leave Paris for a trip to the U.S., their birthplace, or if he wants to return to his family in Vietnam.  

Truong takes readers on a journey into Binh’s experience as a foreigner in Paris using brief snapshots like photographs to relay his story.

Truong’s use of language in “The Book of Salt” paints a vivid picture through the images she constructs with the pen. Her use of language does a good job of bringing the reader into Binh’s experiences and memories. One such snapshot is from Chapter 13, we travel with the Mesdames and Binh to a town called Bilignin in the Rhône Valley. 

As a reader, we get the sense that Binh is not very fond of Bilignin from the opening lines of the chapter. He says:

“When I applied for the position as live-in cook, I did not know about the house in Bilignin. I assumed that the lives of these two American ladies and therefore mine would be centered in Paris on the rue de Fleurus. They did not inform me during the interview about their seasonal migration. Not that it would have made a difference to me then. Before joining their household, I thought that a home was a home, a Madame was a Madame, a city was...well, even  then I knew that Paris was a city and that many other places were not.” 

Truong doesn’t stop there. In Bilignin, it’s almost as if Binh loses himself even though in Bilignin, Binh is more of a curiosity than anything else. The farmers in the town are not threatened by him. Binh shares, “The farmers in the village are gracious enough and at first simply curious enough to invite me, the first asiatique they have ever seen, into their homes.”

Truong periodically incorporates French phrases into her writing but limits her usage. Generally speaking, as a reader, we are able to utilize the context clues to determine meaning. However, I did find myself Googling quiet a few phrases. As the statement above shows, although Binh is welcomed, into the homes of the locals, he seems to spend a lot of time during the summer intentionally trying to get lost. Lost from the ghosts that haunt him, lost in the crowd, lost from who he is. He does so by drinking heavily. Truong writes, “All the families in this area make their own wine, so drinking is never a problem, and generosity fills my glass till I thirst for just a bit of water. I have found that water at the end of these nights eases my entry back into Monday.”

Over the course of the summer, we see Binh spend a good bit of time in the bottle getting lost. So much so that his Mesdames know his routine, drunk on Sunday, sick on Monday morning. There is even a running discourse between Binh and Miss Tolkas, ““It is my health—” I lie. “But I am improving as we speak,” Miss Toklas finishes my speech for me.”” To accommodate the fact that Binh is basically useless each Monday Miss Toklas adjusts his schedule giving him Mondays off – unpaid of course.

Each Sunday Binh finds himself in the bottle, he seems to lose more of himself. At one point Truong writes, 

“The farmers in Bilignin work and drink like horses. The two activities do not seem to affect each other in any significant way. I, however, begin losing my appetite and my body weight right along with it. By the end of the summer GertrudeStein, when greeting me, finds it necessary to repeat herself: “Well, hello, Thin Thin Bin.” A cook who has no desire to eat is a lost soul. Worse, he is a questionable cook. Even when I can no longer take a sip, a bite, a morsel of any of the dishes that I am preparing for my Mesdames, I never forget that tasting is an indispensable part of cooking. The candlelight flicker of flavors, the marriage of bright acidity with profound savoriness, aromatics sparked with the suggestion of spice, all these things can change within seconds, and only a vigilant tongue can find that precious moment when there is nothing left to do but eat.”

One interesting tidbit from the novel is that Miss Stein does not go by Miss Stein or Gertrude or any other variation, but "GertrudeStein", all one word. The above excerpt from the book provides a clear snapshot of Binh’s physical and mental state in Bilignin. It's as if he is even more out of his element in Bilignin than in Paris. A foreigner. An outsider. An exile.

In "The Book of Salt", Truong also intricately uses the language of food to draw the reader into Binh’s world, a style she carries throughout the novel. This makes sense considering that Truong's idea for the novel originated from the mention of an Indochinese cook in Ms. Toklas' published cookbook "The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book", according to the publisher Houston Mifflin Co. It also makes sense that Binh's function as the colonized, a cook, is equated to his identity in a way.

As Binh’s story develops throughout the novel, we find that he carries with him scars of the past primarily from verbal abuse inflicted by his dad. An internal voice which comes out frequently to criticize Binh simply described as the “Old Man”. 

Even though Binh learned French from his brother who worked as a sous chef in a French kitchen in Saigon while growing up, there remains a language gap between Binh and French speakers. Before leaving Vietnam, Binh had worked with his brother in a French kitchen until being fired for having an inappropriate relationship with the chef according to the Madame of the house. Binh is never quite as eloquent in his French speaking out loud as he is in his own internal dialogue which he shares as narrator. 

Curiously enough, Binh does find some value in Bilignin. Binh relays, “The farmers there ask very little of me, and when they do they seem to enjoy, unlike their Parisian cousins, the sounds of the French language faltering on my tongue. Sometimes they even ask to hear a bit of Vietnamese.”

Despite his efforts to get lost, to forget. Binh never does. The chapter closes with a poignant statement. “In a matter of a few short hours, everyone in that village loses his memory. Everyone except me. Believe me, I have tried. But no matter how much I drink, I am still left with their voices, thick with alcohol, and their faces burnt raw by the sun.”

In this we see Binh's desperate attempts to get lost never really come to fruition. Unfortunately, that feeling of being out of our element. Of being different. The desire to get lost in the midst of everyone else is never something that we can ever really truly achieve. We can not run from who we are. Hide from where we've been or come from. Become who we are not. Instead, as individuals we must face who we are. Our uniqueness. Our differences. And more importantly, we must treat ourselves and others with a little kindness, compassion and mercy so no one feels the need to get lost.

Blood and Salt in The Book of Salt

     While reading The Book of Salt by Monique Troung there were different symbols that stuck out to me. Obviously salt is a large symbol in the book but another one I noticed was blood. This book is about a young, gay, Vietnamese man, named Binh that travels to Paris in order to escape his life and his father (or rather Old Man as he calls him). While in Paris he becomes a cook in the employ of two women Miss Toklas, and Gertrude Stein, these women are lovers who invite others into their bedroom as well. As he works for them, he finds a lover that is one of their acquaintances. His lover, Marcus Lattimore, is at first a good influence on him. Being a person of color also in France, he understands some of the things that Binh is going through. But later it is revealed that he is a fan of Gertrude Stein's novels and tries to have Binh steal the manuscript of a new one she is writing. Binh does, in order to have a picture with his beloved. And he finds out that the new book that Gertrude Stein is writing is about him. First guilt racks him and then realizing the story is his, he no longer feels guilty for his story is his own. But it is later revealed that Lattimore was using Binh to get an early manuscript of Stein’s latest writings. After that Toklas and Stein decide to go back to America and let Binh go. That same day he receives a letter from his brother in Vietnam, stating that his father has had a stroke and is dying and his mother has already passed. The book ends with his Mesdames (Stein and Toklas) and Binh departing.
    Salt is deposited throughout the novel as if the author were seasoning the book all the way through. It is mentioned in different sayings like in the salt of sweat, the salt of the sea Binh sailed on to get to Paris or the salt in the food he made for her Mesdames. However, one quote that stands out to me is when Binh cooks with Miss Toklas, making gazpacho together. She had lived in Spain for a time, and does not trust Binh to make gazpacho authentically.

“ A pinch of salt, according to my Madame. Should not be a primitive reflex, a nervous twitch on the part of any cook, especially one working at 21 rue de Fleurus. Salt is an ingredient to be considered and carefully weighed like all the others. The true taste of salt- the whole of the sea on the tip of the tongue, sorrow’s sting, labor’s smack-has been lost, according to my Madam, to centuries of culinary imprudence”(Truong, 211)

    While this means in the basest of terms that salt is overpowering to the palette of those who reside in 27 rue de Fleurus, the metaphor mixed with the implication of the strong flavor of salt is what interests me. Stein and Toklas are two assumingly wealthy white women, who most likely never experienced hard labor. Perhaps hardship in the way they lead their lives as lesbians in the 1920’s and 30’s, but never as strong as someone like Binh. Comparing the flavor of salt to the sweat and the beating of hard labor is something only Binh knows in that apartment. Comparing salt to the entirety of the sea is something only Binh knows for he worked on a ship before coming to Paris. Comparing salt to the stinging tears of sorrow as one must leave their life in disgrace for a new one, is something only Binh knows. He was thrown out of his place of employment in Vietnam for having indiscretions with the Chef at the Governor-General's home. And perhaps because he knows these things all too well is why salt is not too much for him.
    While salt is sprinkled in through the book. Blood is spilled in different places. One place that caught my eye was in the middle of the novel when the Mesdames and Binh are on their summer holiday and Binh arrives at their vacation home one night, completely inebriated and becomes ill. Both his Mesdames, especially Miss Toklas, is angry with him. Though Gertrude Stein extends more kindness to him than her lover. Though he feels guilty for waking them up for being ill, he also is upset that they are angry at him for being human.

“To walk without blinking an eye is to say to each other that we are human, whole, a man or a woman like any other, two lungfuls of air, a heart pumping blood, a stomach hungry for home-cooked food, a body in constant search for the warmth of the sun. Before I came to the rue de Fleurus, GertrudeStein, the only way I knew how to hold onto the moment of dispensation, that without-blinking-an-eye exchange, to keep it warm in my hands, was by threading silver through them. Blood makes me a man. No one can take that away from me, I thought.”(Truong,142)

    In this quote, we see that “blood” means sameness to Binh. That we all as human beings have blood, have common necessities like air and food. But in order for Binh to feel that he is still human, to feel that he is not other, compared to everyone in France. He needs to see his blood, to know he has it. To know he is human. Though he lives with people who are similar to him. Similar in the way that their sexuality is looked down upon and that they are oddities themselves. Even in this place of similarly, this is othering is due to the fact that he is not French, not American, not white in any of the sense. He does not speak French well and does not speak English and he describes his Vietnamese as taking “on the pallor of the dying, the faded colors of the abandoned.” (Truong, 117). None of the languages he knows is full of life and blood and so his need to see his own blood is driven even more.

War Breeds Genius

“Where were you when the world stopped turnin’

That September day?

Were you in the yard with your wife and children

Or workin’ on some stage in L.A.?

Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke

Risin’ against that blue sky?

Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor

Or did you just sit down and cry?”

Country music star Alan Jackson wrote the song above, “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)”, putting words and music to the horror that befell the United States on September 11, 2001.

Take a minute.

Where were you?

What were you doing?

Who were you with?

Did you understand the full magnitude of what just happened or was happening?

Did you have a clue what the next 13 years were going to bring?

Did (Do) you have friends, family, lovers in the military that answered President George Bush’s call to end the terroristic rule of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces based in Afghanistan?

Did your loved ones make it home…?

Without delving too far into my own personal narrative, my father, two cousins, my husband, and numerous close friends have all served in Operation Enduring Freedom at some point between 2001 and 2014. We are among the lucky. Everyone came home, physically whole. We know many others who did not.

All parts of war, the heroic and patriotic beginning, the heroic and horrific middle, and the heroic and seemingly hopeless end, are awful. It is through this historic lens of war that we will delve into Monique Truong’s novel, The Book of Salt.

The Book of Salt isn’t a book about war. It doesn’t talk about military tactics nor does it discuss the tragedies of war, such as death, disease, and dismemberment. At least, not directly. Let me explain.

The main character, Binh, is a Vietnamese cook who immigrated to France in order to escape his judgmental father’s homophobia and the unfortunate love affair that informed his father to his sexual preferences. Binh eventually lands a job as a live-in cook with his “madams”, who happened to be two American women also seeking solace and enlightenment in Paris. Here Binh was immersed in a world of “otherness”. He was neither French nor American, thus he was of little substance to his madams beyond the service he provided to them. He saw everything but was never seen. He had no identity, no culture to call his own.  He was outcast, bereft, lonely, and yet king of his kitchen. There is enough in this one paragraph to nearly write a dissertation on, but that’s not my focus today.

Let’s back up to Binh’s employers, the two women who happened to be famous American author Gertrude Stein and her lifelong companion/assistant, Alice Toklas. The life of these two women in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s (the setting of The Book of Salt) is what I want to talk about.

During this time, both France and the United States were still reeling and healing from the Great War, World War I. Many Americans, those who served in the war and those who sacrificed in other ways on the homefront, became intensely disenchanted with American traditional (read "conservative") values after witnessing what they saw as unnecessary death on an astronomical magnitude. As a result, many left America, moved to Paris and became known as “The Lost Generation”. Members of this illustrious club? Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.E. Cummings…and Gertrude Stein. 

In this way, war, particularly World War I, shaped and molded modern American literature, in a very significant way. Without the war, there would be no Lost Generation. Gertrude Stein and her home were an integral part of the Lost Generation’s revolt, where members wrote about frivolousness, changing gender roles, morphing sexual identities, and (re)creating a fanciful past that did not include two million friends dying of dysentery and foot rot. Without this canon of work, modern American literature would look vastly different than it does today. Without the influence of the Lost Generation, there very well might not be a story about Binh.

But wait, there’s more.

The author, Monique Truong, is herself a Vietnamese immigrant, though it would be more accurate to call her a political refugee. According to her website by the same name, she and her family moved from Saigon to the United States in 1975. This was the year that South Vietnam surrendered to Communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong forces, officially ending the 21 year “conflict” that killed roughly 2,000,000 million civilians as listed in Britannica. No doubt Monique and her family witnessed horrific events of this war that catapulted them from their homeland in hopes for a better life in America. As an adult, Monique is a writer living in NYC, whose first novel, The Book of Salt, was inspired by a chance notation she read in Alice Toklas’ cookbook about the South Asian cook who lived with Toklas and her lover, Gertrude Stein. While there is still a chance that a version of Monique who never left Vietnam would have still read an American cookbook that would lead to her successful novel about Binh, I think it is fair to say that the odds would not have been in her (or our) favor.

Still with me? Because here’s the buy one, get one free special!

The book about a Vietnamese immigrant living in a home with arguably the ringleader of America’s Lost Generation, which was formed due in part to the fallout of the Great War, was written by a refugee from the Vietnam War, and was published in 2003. So, you say?

In 2003, we as a country were two years past the September 11^th tragedy that redefined history. We were in the throes of Operation Enduring Freedom, just beginning Operation Iraqi Freedom, with death notices being delivered to American families at an alarming rate. This war would rage on until its official death in 2014, though there are many still today who do not believe it is really over, despite what the official documents say.

War breeds genius. Sometimes evil, mad, and destructive. Other times, enlightening, innovative, and hopeful. In a historical way, it is the latter that brought the world The Book of Salt, and the literary world is grateful. 

My husband and I in 2016 at Joint Base San Antonio (aka Fort Sam Houston), Texas. He is set to retire in September 2021, as a combat veteran with 20 years honorable service.  

 

Good Life Anywhere?

Warning: The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov may not be for the faint of heart!  While the narrative incorporates a fascinating setting and a group of Moldovan people that many readers (who read books written in American English) may not be so familiar with, the non-linear continuation of the story and the dark humor that consistently pops up throughout the situations of each character are difficult to grasp yet intriguing to read at the same time.

Personally, I found the constant change of characters and stories in each chapter rather disorienting at times. While this may largely depend on the reader’s preference as well as his/her personal experiences and familiarity with non-linear writing, the stories of various characters were not easy to follow since the story does not follow a chronological order. This was the case especially for me because I am not used to reading a narrative like this. It felt like there were breaks and intermissions between chapters. In addition to struggling to keep up with the overall plot, this jumping of characters and their experiences could detract from building strong characterization. For instance, whether it’s in a movie or a novel, I tend to connect with my characters with the consistency of how they are portrayed in the work. However, that was a bit difficult to do. Still, the descriptions involved in each of the characters helped to overcome that lack of stability in characterization.

Moreover, this non-linear form is not completely untrue in how it reflects the way life actually is for many of us. In a way, the author’s choice to use a non-linear timeline to portray this story of migration seems almost too realistic. We all know that life, much less life in movement, gives us one thing at a time. Sometimes we juggle with numerous obligations and tasks; rarely, do things happen, or do we meet people in some kind of expected, orderly fashion. Similar to real life, The Good Life Elsewhere has an unsettling mood, which is palpable for the reader as he/she tries to figure out who is doing what in each chapter. This mood definitely adds to this migration narrative.

This unsettling mood produced by the constant change is further enhanced by the dark humor that Lorchenkov sporadically uses throughout the novel. Even though it took me a while to figure out that the author was exaggerating and poking fun at certain points of his story, the dark humor really stresses the absurdity of the things these characters go through. For example, chapter two, which ends with Maria’s suicide, stands out to me as one of those moments. I was shocked at how Lorchenkov chose to describe this scene. Lorchenkov uses details like Maria swinging “on the acacia all through the following week” (19). In this particular moment, while Lorchenkov expresses the hopelessness that Maria feels as she realizes she would never be able to go to Italy, he creates this dark situation to be absurd through the interactions between Maria and her husband, Vasily. Maria announces her plan to take her life, but Vasily responds indifferently, only showing concern for the tree she plans on hanging from. Probably up until this moment in the book (and perhaps pretty early on in the story), I understood the events of the characters in a more literal way. However, the way Lorchenkov describes Maria’s suicide had me thinking about the extremities and the hardships many migrant peoples go through to relocate to a place that they have only dreamed of. 

This kind of despair wrapped in a chilling, nonchalant ridiculousness is not something only applicable to these Moldovan people. While reading the novel, I was often reminded of North Korean defectors. I thought of why this may be so. The honest answer I could come up with was the fact that most North Koreans often have this same wishful thinking as the characters in The Good Life Elsewhere. Similar to our characters, North Koreans hope for a better life in a different place. They have an “anywhere but here” mentality. Many choose to defect from their motherland in hopes to gain freedom, have an education, make money, and just attain the basic necessities of life. Many have a fantasy of this land they have never visited and believe they could be so much happier in this imaginary new home. Once they arrive in China or if they are lucky in South Korea, most North Korean defectors face discrimination because of their pasts, which is difficult to hide due to their accents and mannerisms. Many North Koreans struggle to adapt to their new lives. This makes us think: how prevalent is this wishful thinking to go to a different country to start a new life only to be jaded? Is a good life elsewhere possible or is it just all in our imagination?

All in all, Lorchenkov combines various techniques to engage his readers in a thought-provoking way; he makes us rethink migration narratives through his non-linear writing and absurd mood. Lorchenkov is successful in having his readers connect with the complicated feelings experienced by migrant peoples: the helplessness in their various livelihoods and relentless hope for a better place. 

Towards the end of the novel, the protagonist, Serafim declares that “everything will change” once they make it to the “fairytale land” of Italy (164). However, it is quite clear that this may not be so. How can a person fully let go and erase his/her history of who he/she is and what he/she has been through? Perhaps, Lorchenkov wanted to portray that this might not even be possible as memories and histories of people cannot just suddenly all disappear whether or not they are in search of a paradise that only exists in their minds. But, at the same time, maybe it is this ridiculous hope that allows these people to find a will to continue to live their lives and a desire for a better future.

Funny but Not Funny

Funny but Not Funny

In the movie, Joker (2019), in one of the most tragic scenes (I will skip the detail of this scene for who have not watched this movie!), Arthur Fleck (also known as the Joker) says “I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but I realize that it’s a f-ing comedy!” Many audiences (perhaps!), including me, interpret this dialogue as the protagonist’s crossing the “mental” border from a naïve dream believing he will become a famous comedian to escape from what oppresses him (e.g., social health care system and severe poverty) to destructing and revolting that dream directly with his offensiveness and insanity by his own will.

Even though Joker is not a kind of migration narrative and black comedy focused film, the reason that the dialogue resonates in me when writing this analysis is that, in The Good Life Elsewhere, the narrative is all about the naïve dream of immigrants and their failure to achieve the dream. But differently from Joker’s case, they could never cross both “mental” and “physical” borderline to fulfill (or dismantle) their dream. And their frustration is described in its full of black-comedy events, much like this reversed dialogue of the Joker, “I used to think that my life was a comedy, but I realized that it’s an absurd tragedy!”

Scene 1:

This story is set in Moldova, where the poverty-brutality dominated land, which has a village, like Mingir “in the Hincesti region,” where residents “habitually trafficked in kidneys” (48). Ironically, in this brutal setting, their hope emerges, and every comic situation happens from the unachievable hope to migrate to Italy. When they are dreaming it, there is a great, saint euphoria; Italian dream; the promised land. In particular, for Serafim, one of the main characters, this dream is invaluable, as described as:

“Serafim, recalling with perfect lucidity how Rome looked in pictures in Echo of the Planet… the sun hadn’t yet lifted its veil from Rome to show them the city, that sleeping beauty, in her full glory… Rapture shone on all their faces, Serafim, for example, was already savoring his visits to the museums and theaters, and his sublime walks through the crooked streets of Rome… as a place where Lady Luck would finally flash them a smile… One way or another, they all had the same goal: Rome!”

However, unlike his celestial name symbolizes who works in heaven, Serafim cannot reach his saint Elysium even from the beginning of the fiction to the end. Eventually, when they believe they will cross the border and arrive in Italy soon, they arrive at the capital of Moldova, Chisinau as a fraud. Even though Serafim spends his fortune and 25 years to earn the expense for illegal immigration and to learn Italian, his dream fails. For some audience, this futile outcome (“Welcome to Chisinau!”) from his naïve-life endeavor might us cause to laugh and to feel sympathetic frustration at the same time, and yes, it was exactly me.

Scene 2:

Continuously, the Moldovans cannot escape their reality despite their struggling, and the tragic-comedy plot is repeated, again and again. The second scene that draws the audience’s complex sentiment is, again, in the poverty-stricken setting, the kidney. A man, who dreams to escape his poverty, Jan plans to sell his kidney, and laughably he also plans to return back his kidney in “an unusual way” like this:

He says that ”People who receive transplants from pigs sometimes acquire the physical characteristics of these animals,”…”I conducted one experiment with our biological ancestors, monkeys, involving the transplant of various pig organs… I postulate that something similar can happen with human beings” (50).

After then, he bought a piglet and wine by spending his pension and talk to the cute piglet, “I’ call you Sunrise, since you symbolize a new life”…“Just as the sunrise conquers the night, your kidney will postpone my death a prolong my life!” (51).

How naïve and tragic but very funny. However, much like Serafim’s absurd case, his idea is never fulfilled, and his goal and peace are never achieved. More tragically, he faces his death with missing “his gallbladder, half of his liver, one lung, two heart ventricles and for some reason his appendix had all gone missing…” (52). Again, how naïve! and tragic! but Funny!

Scene 3:

In the last chapter, the protagonist, Serafim also confronts his (physical or mental) death. After his recalling some remembrances of his life passage, after an (infeasible or feasible) explosion “on the outskirts of Larga,” a miraculous dream becomes unreal-real or real-unreal, as written as, “the slice of land on which Larga lay began to slowly slide into the river” and “began to float” (183). And Soon, the floating land “approached the sea,” and “The villagers came ever closer and seraphim went out to meet them, opening his heart and his arms. He smiled” (184).

Is this real? Is Serafim really meeting the villagers and enter the euphoric land? Actually, the fact does not matter. The important thing is, mostly for readers, the last part also means the repeated plot structure with nonsense events that make us laugh and have a sympathetic response from the character’s frustration, through all their absurd reality who desire to be immigrants in a promised land. Fortunately, Serafim, like his angelic name, with the villagers, it seems that he successfully migrate to the symbolic but actual promised land, the heaven, after losing physical or psychological himself. And then, finally, this absurd story ends.

The author, Vladimir Lorchenkov, barrows the format of tragic-comedy or absurd drama to show this ironic reality and enlighten audiences in terms of the useless and helpless of minor immigrants or refugees’ efforts in all directions and in terms of their physical, psychological, and material sacrifices if the refugee/immigrants successfully cross the border and settle their each promised land.

(LIke we watch every day from various media this kind of tragedy, frustration, and unrealistic black-comedy situations, these kinds of tragic-comedy happens on all borders around the world (see the Border Wall made by who has the world’s greatest power.)

Returning back to the movie, Joker (2019), Joker could cross the social and his mental border by taking all violent ways by his own will, thus he can say “I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but I realize that it’s a f-ing comedy!” But, for the Moldovans, even their stories are full of comic situations and end with laughing, but their dead bodies are left behind as victims through inevitable external violent tragedies that make them not cross the border.

 

Getting Shoved Here, There, and /Elsewhere/ by Vladimir Lorchenkov

Chapters, POVs, and Linearity in The Good Life Elsewhere

When you first pick up an English edition of The Good Life Elsewhere, its cover greets you grumpily. Three line-drawn figures look out from the monochrome background, each holding a hoe and frowning, one gazing wistfully at the reader while the other two glower at him.  The back of this novel, written by Moldovan author Vladimir Lorchenkov, promises that it will be a funny book, but also a sad one: the residents of a tiny Moldovan town in their attempts to migrate (illegally) to Italy for work.  This simple premise calls to mind a linear narrative, likely punctuated by bumps in the road where the villagers’ efforts are delayed, ending in a triumphant yet uneasy scene in which the successful immigrants enter their new country, full of hope for the future.

 

Not so in this novel.  We open to a bold statement:

“Here you are!  Italy, our Italy.”

Serafim Botezatu narrowed his eyes and blinked, but the city spreading out beneath him in the valleys between the hills didn’t disappear.  Buildings of white stone were just as blinding as the joy Serafim and his forty-five fellow travelers—Moldovans all—were feeling.  They were standing in a little grove on a hill beside the capital of capitals, Rome herself, and none of them could believe what was happening.  Finally, they’d made it to Italy.

Here, we meet who we might assume to be the main character, Serafim, a young man who has dreamed of Italy his whole life.  He learned perfect Italian from a textbook, studied it in every way he could, and paid human traffickers four thousand euro—up front—to be bussed into the country.

 

At the end of this chapter, Serafim and his fellow villagers walk into the city and learn that they’ve been duped.  They spent days in a cramped bus, paying extra money to traffickers with each “customs stop,” to be dropped outside their own capital of Chisinau.

 

After this disappointing episode, the novel jumps around, generally without warning, sharing the villagers’ continued efforts to leave Moldova.  Each chapter tends to share a new event, a new person, and many present events out of chronological order.  As readers, we are shoved and shunted in unexpected ways by Lorchenkov’s chapter, POV, and chronological structure.  This deviation from “default” narrative norms—extremely short chapters, consistent point-of-view, main characters, mostly-chronological presentation—serves to share a story in general, a story that can resonate with more (and more deeply) than the simple, linear narrative can convey.

 

The Chapters and Timeline

Two-page chapters are, of course, not unheard-of in conventional literature.  James Patterson, for example, is known for the practice—and his books are about as mainstream as you can get.  However, Lorchenkov uses these chapters in different ways.  Most times, the end of a chapter marks the end of a vignette (or, at least, a temporary transition to another one).  Chapters 10 and 11 tell the story of a man who sold a kidney and attempted to replace it with a pigs’; the second chapter shares his widow’s grief.  Chapter 12, meanwhile, takes place in the Italian Consulate of Romania as two customs agents discuss (and obfuscate) Moldovan efforts to enter Italy.  Neither of these vignettes directly progress beyond these three chapters.

 

Many other chapters do share stories that we revisit across the novel, but they frequently take place out-of-order, from a different POV, or in the form of news stories.  The lack of a Table of Contents further throws us into a world with no anchor—we’re never sure where, when, or with whom the next chapter will be—but they allow Lorchenkov to tell the story of an entire village/nation in a single book.  Such a wide-reaching story, by its nature, cannot be both honest and singular.  Such a story must be disjointed and cacophonous and inconsistent to convey the (shared) experiences of so many.

 

The POV

Rather than sticking to one or a few point-of-view characters, Lorchenkov provides us with a dozen or so whose stories progress through the novel.  The point of view is almost always some form of third-person, though one story is presented in italics by the first-person chronicler of a religious crusade.  Lorchenkov toes the line between third-person limited and omniscient, sometimes sharing characters’ inner lives not, but the way in which he shares them is interesting.

 

Like the events in the novel, people’s thoughts and internal motivations are presented as both accidental and predetermined at the same time.  An example from Chapter 28, when Serafim suggests to his friend another scheme for smuggling themselves into Italy (after several failed attempts):

After which, he [Serafim] prudently grabbed a pitchfork and took shelter in the house.  Serafim was saved from arson only because it was Vasily’s house, and Vasily couldn’t bring himself to burn down his own place of residence, even to smoke out a newly acquired enemy.

Rather than placing the reader within Vasily’s head during this exchange, we view the altercation from a distance.  The narrator casually inserts observational terms like “prudently” while reporting the event as objectively as possible—with the added information of why Vasily doesn’t burn down the house.

 

The first sentence of the chapter is “Of course, at first the friends fought.”  There was no other possibility besides violence in this instance, but that violence is also individualized; they fight using moves from a Bruce Lee film they saw together as children.  Even when writing this idiosyncratic fight, Lorchenkov structures the telling in a way that portrays the event as fully natural and without mystery.

 

The End

This empirical posture is consistent throughout the novel as Serafim and Vasily’s flying tractor is hit by stray bullets shot to disperse clouds from a government meeting; as Vasily’s wife hangs herself in the yard after being duped by the human traffickers and berated by her husband; as Moldovan military shelling causes Serafim’s village to break free of the land and finally float down the river toward Italy.  By exaggerating the limits of reality and keeping readers off-balance, Lorchenkov creates a story that can contain and express the multitudinous experiences of the Moldovan people, their desire for a better life, and the forces (and people) that keep them trapped.  As readers, we participate in the characters’ disorientation and desire for stability while being made to understand, with some distance, how the villagers’ own actions contribute to their confinement, both real and felt.

A Close Look at the use of Kidneys to discuss Economic and Immigration Issues through Vladimir Lorchenkov's The Good Life Elsewhere

 

There’s a good chance the general population of readers has not heard of Vladimir Lorchenkov, Moldova, or of his novel, The Good Life Elsewhere. When it comes to discussions around literature or the literary canon, literature from Moldova is less likely to be the topic of discussion. Nevertheless, here we are, talking about it. The Good Life Elsewhere is about the efforts of citizens of Moldova to immigrate to Italy. The tragicomic stories of the struggles of different citizens is set against the backdrop of the growing ties between Moldova and Russia and the xenophobia of Italy. Although Lorchenkov’s satire appears absurd and completely unbelievable, the book uses humor and kidneys to address issues of currency and worth.

The old village of Mingir is a hot spot for trafficking human kidneys, but the surprise is that the “kidneys were their own.” At first glance it’s a silly little story about an “old timer,” who after losing the eight thousand…no, four thousand….nope, the two thousand dollars he’d earned for selling a kidney to Israeli visitors who promised to pay big money for kidneys, quickly finds himself without money and without his health. Jan, the protagonist, needs another kidney and finds salvation through the idea of harvesting kidneys from a pig named Sunrise. All this talk of kidneys is reminiscent of James Joyce’s “Calypso” episode of “Ulysses,” when Mr. Bloom is thinking about kidney and his love of eating them, which is discussed in a blog post by Allie Bain titled “The Symbolic Use of the Kidneys in Episode Four of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Bain also reminds readers of the bathroom scene mentioning the disposal of waste from Mr. Bloom’s body. The function of kidneys is to remove waste from the body, and in both Joyce’s “Calypso” and Lorchenkov’s chapters 10 and 11, we see a taking in of waste and a removal of waste. Bain’s argument is that Joyce is “draw[ing] attention to the amount of waste that we take in on a daily basis;” however, there is a different argument to be made from Lorchenkov’s “kidneys” and it is that the people of Moldova, or impoverished persons in general, are the waste, especially when in possession of a valuable commodity.

The internet can be searched high and low for kidney symbolism within literature and there is much to be found on the matter. Kidneys are a big deal. What we see in the novel is that kidneys are the blood diamonds of Moldova, and although Lorchenkov chooses humor to illustrate the suffering the trafficking has caused Jan, and others mentioned in the chapter, the story has roots in a very unfunny reality.

On Youtube, there is a video by Al Jazeera English titled, “Moldova’s Organ Trafficking Misery” dating back to 2010. The host interviews several Moldovan villagers who, in 1996, were promised jobs in Istanbul, but upon arrival were held hostage and told they could not be released unless they gave away a kidney. Now the villagers suffer from major health issues and lack government assistance. Instead, the government claims to have “eradicated organ trafficking from their country” and offered each captive enough money for wood for the winter. Waste. The people, not the wood, at least according to their government. “The villagers lived in poverty, and what’s more, they lived in pain” is how Lorchenkov describes the people of Mingir, which can also be said for the real-life villagers of Mingir. In the novel, the visitors from Israel convinced the villagers to “put their kidney’s up for sale” in the hopes to receive a large lumpsum of money, and even though the villagers knew it wasn’t true, they still lined up to give away their kidney in order to make ends meet back home.

What is Lorchenkov saying? Is this a commentary on the cyclical nature of economics and how much is wasted on a daily basis? Is this about taking goods from poor people, to give to developed nations, but not compensating the poor? I really don’t know. Beyond the central conflict is commentary on issues surrounding immigration and trade. The chance to reach the promise land, Italy, for the Moldovans in the novel, seems hopeless, but the hope is still there even for people viewed as the waste of society only useful to be used. There is something to be said about the kidneys being used and imported and exported with ease, but the people of Moldova finding it difficult to reach Italy that is a mere day’s drive by car. Commodities travel through borders with ease, but people are stopped at every checkpoint. We’ll take the goods, but not the culture or people from which it came.

The transition between the end of chapter 10, when Jan dies because he cannot complete the kidney transplant on his own, to that of his wife making kidney soup reminds me of statement made by a government worker in the Youtube video about kidney trafficking in Moldova: “If something bad happens, it’s best to deny it exist.” Kidney soup is just that— the denial of an issue. Human organ trafficking is suddenly overshadowed by the prize-winning recipe. The recipe equals the money for wood that the Moldovans received as restitution from the kidney trafficking hostage situation. What’s not missed, within the varied, colorful ingredients listed, is a litany of similes to describe the treatment of Moldovans by outsiders. From the time they are born and baptized in “five cups of water,” they have salt aggressively rubbed into the “wounds of [their] heart” and pushed aside to deal with their issues in silence (in the kitchen). Kidneys were used for sacrifices and are symbolic of desire and are often mentioned in the Bible. The twelfth chapter is rich in allusions to both. Although it is a fun and quirky read, the pain behind the satire is still evident.