STORIES ON SUNDAY: Chantha Nguon & Kim Green (Slow Noodles)

Kicking off our Stories on Sundays series is Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon with Kim Green.

In this online event that’s sure to be packed with flavor, you will hear readings from this much-anticipated memoir, then hear the story behind the book and much more in a Q&A with Chantha, along with co-author Kim Green. Chantha’s daughter Clara Kim, who wrote the book’s epilogue and narrated the audio book, will also join in on the discussion.

This event is especially meaningful for us: In 2021, Hippocampus Magazine published “The Gradual Extinction of Softness” by Chantha Nguon with Kim Green, an essay which was later named a best essay of the year (and republished) by Longreads.

Slow Noodles has been getting much praise in recent weeks, so we’re updating this event listing to share these accolades, such as:

• The 30 New Books We Can’t Wait to Read (Reader’s Digest)
• Washington Post’s Book Suggestions for 2024
• These New Books Could Be Some of the Best Reads of 2024 (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Zibby Owens’ Predictions for the 2024 Bestseller Lists

About the book: In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodian refugee who loses everything and everyone—home, family, and country—all but the remembered tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen. She takes us back to the quiet rhythms of 1960s Battambang, her provincial hometown, before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart and exterminated more than a million Cambodians, including ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family. Then, as an emigrant in Saigon, the author loses her mother, brothers, and sister and eventually flees to a refugee camp in Thailand. For two decades in exile, she survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture nurse, and weaving silk.

Nguon’s irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this lyrical and inspirational memoir that includes more than twenty family recipes for dishes like chicken lime soup, green papaya pickles, and pâté de foie, as well as Khmer curries, stir-fries, and handmade bánh canh noodles. Through it all, recreating the dishes from her childhood becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother, whose “slow noodles” approach to healing and to cooking prioritized time and care over expediency.

You can pre-order the book here.

Bonus: Watch the Slow Noodles Book Trailer

About the Series: Stories on Sundays are bi-monthly readings from a recent/forthcoming work of creative nonfiction followed by an author interview + audience Q&A. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Chantha Nguon

Chantha Nguon was born in Cambodia and spent two decades as a refugee, until she was finally able to return to her homeland. She is the co-founder,of the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center, a social enterprise that offers a living wage, education, and social services to women and their families in rural northeastern Cambodia. A frequent public speaker, she has appeared at universities and on radio and TV news programs, including NPR’s Morning Edition. She cooks often for friends, family, and for private events. (Image by Stacey Irvin c.2014)

Clara Kim

Clara Kim graduated from Sewanee – The University of the South with degrees in math and economics, and from the London School of Economics with a master’s in statistics. She learned Cambodian cooking from her mother, Chantha, and is collecting dozens of her mom’s recipes in a book. Clara runs the U.S. sales division of Mekong Blue; she wrote the epilogue to SLOW NOODLES.

Clara lives and works in London.