Bitter in the Mouth
Bitter in the Mouth is a 2010 novel by Vietnamese-American author Monique Truong. The novel is written in a stream of consciousness narrative structure and follows the character of Linda Hammerick as she comes of age. Linda remembers her childhood in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 1970s and her relationships that follow, through college and beyond. Her present mingles with her past as she learns of her heritage and deals with death, sexual abuse, cancer, and family issues. Throughout all of these experiences, Linda lives with a secret extra sense, the ability to taste words, which she later discovers is a form of synesthesia.
 First edition | |
| Author | Monique Truong |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Random House Publishing Group |
Publication date | August 31, 2010 |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 9780679603429 |
| OCLC | 669071627 |
Characters
Linda Hammerick
Linda is the main character of the novel who has the special ability to taste words when she hears them. In part one of the book, "Confession," she remembers her early childhood, her best friend Kelly, her next door neighbor Wade, and her rape by Kelly's cousin. In addition, she muses on her close relationship with her great-uncle, Baby Harper, as well as her relationships with her mother DeAnne and her father Thomas. In part two of the book, "Revelation", she recovers from the death of Baby Harper and learns that she has cancer. Linda's Vietnamese roots are not revealed until the second half of the novel. When she returns home to North Carolina, she learns of her adoption and original name "Linh-Dao Nguyen" while growing close to her adoptive mother, Deanne. Throughout the novel, Linda reveals details of her time at Yale University and becomes a lawyer.
Kelly Powell
Kelly is Linda's best friend from childhood. They exchange letters with each other throughout their lives and have a crush on the same boy in childhood. She is the only character that Linda reveals her special sense to in the first part of the novel. Kelly and Linda both experience abuse at the hands of Kelly's male cousin. When Kelly is a teenager, she becomes pregnant and leaves town, only revealing the father of the child when Linda returns to Boiling Springs as an adult.
Baby Harper
Harper is Linda's great uncle and she considers him to be her first love. He is the member of Linda's family with whom she has the closet relationship. Harper is closeted for most of the novel but reveals to his family that he is gay when he begins seeing Boiling Spring's funeral director, Cecil. When he and Cecil die suddenly, Linda comes back to Boiling Springs.
Deanne Hammerick
Deanne is Linda's adopted mother. She has trouble accepting Linda as her own child and the two are estranged for most of the novel due to the fact that Linda believes that Deanne knew of her rape but did nothing. By the end of the novel, Deanne reveals Linda's adopted parents' past and explains how Linda came to be adopted by Thomas.
Thomas Hammerick
Thomas is Linda's adopted father who corresponds with her Vietnamese mother Mai-Dao after she leaves him to go back to her fiancé in Vietnam. Thomas takes Linda in after writing her mother and learning of the conditions in Vietnam over a period of years during the war. He is also the one who gives Linda a book on the history of North Carolina that she often comes back to reference throughout her story.
Minor characters
Other characters include Linda's grandmother Irish Whatley, neighbor and crush Wade, and long time boyfriend Leo.
Critical response
Critics have looked at the novel in terms of Linda's synesthesia, race, sexuality, and experiences with trauma. Denise Cruz discusses the novel in terms of the queer and multiracial South in her article "Monique Truong's Literary South and the Regional Forms of Asian America."[1] The novel also sparked interest among literary food studies critics. Jennifer Ho looks closely at Linda's perceived race in a chapter in her Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture.[2] In Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian Literature, Wenying Xu explains "the inextricable involvement of food and sexuality" in novels by Monique Truong and Mei Ng, looking at Linda's synesthesia.[3] In a chapter in a collection about food and literature, Lisa Hinrichsen writes about Truong's novel by looking at the subject of trauma and food in the story.[4] In a review in the journal Gastronomica, Margot Kaminski describes how the novel uses Linda's synesthesia as a way to make her more unique. Even so, Kaminski argues that this uniqueness does not make it harder for readers to relate to her, but adds another dimension to "what it’s like to be Linda."[5]
Book reviews in major newspapers were generally positive. In his review in the New York Times, Roy Hoffman called the book "a moving investigation of invented families and small-town subterfuge, a search for self heightened by the legacy of Vietnam and the flavors of language."[6] In the Los Angeles Times, Diane Leach wrote, "Truong's bone is the outsider's plight, and her pen is a scalpel, laying perfect words down along that nerve until even the happiest reader understands what it means to forever stand apart from your family and the larger society you inhabit."[7] Writing in the Boston Globe, Diane Wright called the novel "a beautifully written, complex story of self-discovery."[8] In a less favorable review in the San Francisco Chronicle, Joan Frank observed, "Truong's writing is workmanlike, its energy sustained, and now and again it yields a lovely line: 'Another word for pray was wish, and only children wished.' But Linda's tone to me often sounded as if she were reciting a series of grievances, secure in the knowledge they will appall."[9]
Intertextual references
Linda references several real-world figures and works throughout her story. The novel is prefaced by a quotation from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; Linda later discusses how she relates to the character of Scout. In addition, she reads a historical book entitled North Carolina Parade: Stories of History and People by Richard Gaither. The history of the Wright Brothers' first flight plays a prominent role in her thoughts throughout the novel. Another historical figure that Linda relates to is George Moses Horton; his poetry and life are mentioned several times in the novel.
References
- Cruz, Denise (November 11, 2014). "Monique Truong's Literary South and the Regional Forms of Asian America". American Literary History. 26 (4): 716–741. doi:10.1093/alh/aju048.
- Ho, Jennifer Ann (2015). "Coda: Ending with Origins: My Own Racial Ambiguity". Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture. Rutgers University Press. pp. 148–152. ISBN 9780813570709. JSTOR j.ctt1729vqq.10.
- Xu, Wenying (2008). Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature. University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 9780824831950.
Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature.
- Hinrichsen, Lisa (2014). "Consuming Memories: The Embodied Politics of Remembering in Vietnamese American Literature of the U.S. South". In Davis, David; Powell, Tara (eds.). Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 179–95. JSTOR j.ctt83jj6h.15.
- Kaminski, Margot (Spring 2012). "Reviewed Work: Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truon". Gastronomica. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 12 (1): 124–125. doi:10.1525/gfc.2012.12.1.124. JSTOR 10.1525/gfc.2012.12.1.124.
- Hoffman, Roy (September 12, 2010). "One Kind of Folks: Book Review - Bitter in the Mouth - By Monique Truong". New York Times. Retrieved December 23, 2016.
- Leach, Diane (August 28, 2010). "The Saturday Read: 'Bitter in the Mouth' by Monique Truong: The author of 'The Book of Salt' follows a North Carolina girl with an unusual auditory disorder through adolescence into adulthood". Los Angeles Times.
- White, Diane (September 13, 2010). "Heroine mixes senses and finds a sense of self". Boston Globe. Retrieved December 23, 2016.
- Frank, Joan (September 5, 2010). "'Bitter in the Mouth,' by Monique Truong". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved December 23, 2016.