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A guest post by Sherri L. Smith

Take a minute to answer this question: If you had one last meal, what would it be? This is one of my favorite dinner party questions. The answer can tell you a lot about someone. Sure, people will ramble, name a dozen items, some of them gourmet dishes from a favorite restaurant, some of them once in a lifetime treats from a vacation overseas, but in the end, if they are like most people, they will end up naming something from their childhood. Something their mother used to make. You can understand, of course, the desire for comfort food if it is indeed your last meal. But, I think it is more than that. It’s an assertion of self, of our origins.

My latest book, Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, is founded on the two great loves of my life—my husband, and food. In the book, 14-year-old Ana Shen struggles to bring two sides of her family—African American and Chinese American—together to make the perfect meal to celebrate her eighth-grade graduation. Like Ana’s mother, I am black, like her father, my husband is Chinese. The idea of Ana was born from my own daydreams of our future children. As a biracial couple, we faced a few hurdles from other people, but we each knew who we were, who we wanted to be. How different would it be for our children, with a foot in each world? How would they assert who they were? These were uncomfortable questions. So, I looked for comfort, and found it in food.

Food is a mother language. Like Latin, it shares its roots with a hundred different cultures. The ingredients are the same—it’s how we express them that is different. Beans and rice is a very southern American dish, if the beans are red and the rice is long grain. Change the beans to black beans, season it with lime and garlic instead of onions and parsley, and it’s a Cuban dish. Fry those same beans twice, remove the lime and add tomato paste, and you have a Mexican dish. Use mung beans and you could have a Caribbean or Chinese meal. Grind the red beans into a paste, and ground the rice into flour for mochi, and you have the makings of a sweet Japanese or Chinese dessert.

This alchemy of food reduces the degrees of separation in a culture, and shows the migratory paths of our ancestors. Chinese workers who built the Pacific railroad tracks from California to Mexico settled in Mexico and changed the way a region cooks. African slaves brought through the Caribbean to the port of New Orleans for sale added their flavors of pepper and okra to the Spanish fish stews and French bouillabaisses to create gumbo and Creole cooking. If Hot, Sour, Salty Sweet was born out of a desire to glimpse the future of what a child of mine might be like, then food was a natural backdrop on which to let it play out. Ultimately, it’s not just the meal they prepare, but the legacy of the food itself that brings Ana and her family together. Each dish in the book tells us a little about the character who made it, who they are today, who they used to be. It is literally what her family brings to the table to share with Ana.

So, if you had one last meal, what would it be? Write down your answer, and then trace back to the beginning of that meal’s family tree. When did you first eat it? Who cooked it for you? Who taught them how to make it? Even if you think the story is short and simple, you will find that it isn’t, and that who “you” are is much bigger than you ever knew. And that is the lesson every child should learn.

Other stops on Sherri L. Smith’s blog tour:
February 11, 2008 @ Finding Wonderland
February 18, 2008 @ Bildungsroman
February 26, 2008 @ Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
February 28, 2008 @ The Brown Bookshelf

About Sherri: Sherri L. Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois and spent most of her childhood reading books. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she has worked in movies, animation, comic books and construction. Sherri’s first book, Lucy the Giant, was an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 2003. Translated into Dutch as Lucy XXL (Gottmer, 2005), her novel was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2005 De Gouden Zoen, or Golden Kiss, Awards for Children’s Literature in the Netherlands. Sherri’s second novel, Sparrow, was chosen as a National Council for the Social Studies/Children’s Book Council Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Hot Sour Salty Sweet (Random House, 2008) is her third novel. She is currently at work on Flygirl, an historical YA novel set during World War II.

After reading Justina Chen Headley’s Girl Overboard, I was finally able to articulate exactly what my problem with most YA books involving Asian-American protagonists is. Too often, it seems like the protagonist’s race/ethnicity/culture matters only when it’s a problem.

The majority of books about Asian-Americans that I’ve read (or tried to read) seemed to me primarily about the protagonist’s identity as an Asian-American instead of being about a person trying to figure out they really are, with their ethnicity as part of their identity. I mean, they were books about people who were discriminated against, ashamed of their ethnicity and culture, or dealing with immigrant parents. They were books about characters who were Asian-American first, not books about a rich girl or a smart girl or girl in love, a girl who’s not struggling with her ethnicity but more universal concerns. Which is probably why I seem to be in the minority of bloggers who didn’t love Headley’s debut novel, Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies). Headley’s second novel has just been published, and while I didn’t love Girl Overboard either, I did really like it. And I’m sure this is largely because Syrah Cheng’s problems don’t stem from the fact that she’s Chinese-American, but because her father is a billionaire.

This does not mean culture is ignored, because it definitely isn’t. The fact that Syrah’s family is Chinese is an important part of the story and Headley doesn’t skimp on cultural details. But I can easily imagine a book about a rich white girl dealing with the same problems—powerful and neglectful parents, hateful half-siblings, a male best friend she might have more than friendly feelings for but is in danger losing anyway despite not doing anything about those feelings, and a dream of making a name for herself as more than just Rich Guy’s daughter. And to me, the essence of Girl Overboard has nothing to do with Syrah’s ethnicity. While their Chinese heritage is an intrinsic part of Syrah and her family, it’s not a problem she has to overcome. Girl Overboard is a story about a girl finding herself and an inner strength she never knew was there, and discovering that she’s not as alone as she thought. The problems with her parents aren’t your stereotypical Asian parent problems, but your more stereotypical rich parent problems. It just so happens that those parents happen to be Chinese.

So there I was, pleased that I was finally able to put my finger on what bothered me so much about other books when I read a book with a hapa protagonist about whom you could argue race was the cause of her problems. Or at least the cause of tension. And I ended up enjoying that book, too.

In Sherri L. Smith’s Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, Ana Shen’s grandparents don’t get along too well. Her Chinese-American father’s parents and African-American mother’s parents will eat together. Just don’t ask them to cook together. But when Ana’s best friend spontaneously invites Ana’s crush, (the Japanese-American!) Jamie Tabata, to dinner at Ana’s house, disaster looms. Both her grandmothers are accomplished cooks, so of course both must prepare dishes for dinner. After all, it’s not every day that you celebrate your graduation from eighth grade. Ana loves both her grandmothers, but the competition between them, especially on her Nai Nai’s (Chinese grandmother) side, makes things difficult for the entire family.

Besides the gentle humor, and the fact that food is a major part of the book, I think what made Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet work for me is that the tension is not so much within Ana, but 1) between her grandmothers, and 2) between Jamie Tabata’s father and, well, basically Ana’s entire family. There was a moment where Smith had me worried about the direction of the story, but it quickly passed and I was very relieved that my fears weren’t realized.

Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet takes place over the course of one afternoon, so the scope of the story is not as large as that of Girl Overboard. I think this is the main reason I liked Girl Overboard more than Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, but as different as the two books are, I still enjoyed and would recommend them both.

I suppose what I said at the beginning, that Asian-American protagonists’ race/ethnicity/culture seeming to matter only when it’s a problem, is still true, at least among books I’ve tried to read in the past. But I’m glad that I found a book where this is not the case, as well as a book I enjoyed, arguably despite this. I’ve got three more books I’m looking forward to reading with Asian-American protagonists (all about girls. Where are the books with Asian-American guys as protagonists?), so I really hope this trend of me being able to actually finish and enjoy these books continues.

If you’re looking for an actual review of Girl Overboard, head on over to Jen Robinson’s Book Page, Dear Author, or Bookshelves of Doom. Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet has been reviewed by Little Willow.