Opening Sesame: Jen Lin-Liu’s Kitchen Classroom

thebeijinger — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:00:00 +0800

Jen Lin-Liu is here for the food. The Chinese-American writer enrolled in a local cooking school in 2005, apprenticed with a chef, worked in restaurant kitchens both humble and grand, wrote about all of these experiences in her memoir, Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China – and then topped it off by opening her own cooking school, Black Sesame Kitchen. We recently asked her a few questions about words and woks.

Book Reviews: May 2009

thebeijinger — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:00:00 +0800

The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

Enough with the China books already – it’s spring. Time for a thick juicy paperback novel to read in the sun. The Hakawati is worthy – a tale from a faraway land written in prose so smooth and vibrant the imagery leaps from the page. The novel gives fresh voice to age-old tales from the Middle East that have been passed down orally by hakawatis (Arabic storytellers) for centuries: the Eye of Fatima, the birth of Mecca, the story of Antar. The stories are woven together with the present-day tale of a man returning from the US to his family in Lebanon. Moving from modern-day Beirut to a time when Baghdad was simply where all good poets went to die, the narrative easily jumps from horseback to hospital room, from demon’s lair to a deserted car dealership. Alameddine gives us Middle Eastern history and culture wrapped in elements of intrigue as old as storytelling itself – bravery, beauty, adventure and adversity. EC

The Beijinger Blog - Emma Cody

Opening Sesame: Jen Lin-Liu’s Kitchen Classroom

Book Reviews: May 2009