Category: novel

📖On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: 🍸dear ma

novel, vodka

📖: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)
🍸: dear ma

Why this book?

This book is my favorite read of 2020. It lives up to its title – absolutely GORGEOUS. The language in this novel is poignant and poetic and reflective and masterful. I have so much admiration for ocean_vuong and his writing, and am so excited to see that this novel is being adapted for film by A24!

This is a piece of literature that I want to keep holding close to my heart. I am an only child of a single mother, so the narrator’s portrayal of the complications, expectations, and anxieties in his relationship with his mother struck a chord with me. Like the narrator, I also grew up in New England as a Vietnamese immigrant, in a family where memories of the War are not just historical events, but a part of who you are and who you grow up to be. So when the narrator expresses the melancholy of living in such a community and the desire to get out and create your own story — I totally felt that.

Beyond these themes, the novel is also about coming of age as a queer person, falling in love for the first time, navigating trauma and grief, and ultimately, survival through storytelling. Our time on earth is brief — how do we reconcile and reckon with our memories of the people we love and lose throughout our lives?

Why this drink?

“Dear Ma” are among the first words that open this novel, written as a letter from the narrator to his mother Hồng, whose name means “rose” in Vietnamese. I chose to pair this book with a rose-flavored drink in honor of his mother.

dear ma

ingredients:
1 oz vodka
1 oz lychee liqueur
0.5 oz Cocchi Americano
0.5 oz lemon juice
0.5 tsp ginger syrup
2-3 drops of rose water, to taste

garnish:
dried rose buds/petals and lemon

  1. To make the ginger syrup, heat freshly grated ginger with 1 part sugar and 1 part water on the stove, just until it begins to boil. Remove immediately from stove and let cool in an airtight container. Strain out the ginger before combining with other cocktail ingredients.
  2. Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice, and shake well.
  3. Strain into a chilled glass, with or without ice.

Another round, please! 🥂
You might also like:
Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh (2001)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Check out these amazing podcast episodes to hear more from and about Ocean Vuong!

📖The Mountains Sing: 🍸grandma’s guava

novel, rum

📖: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing (2020)
🍸: grandma’s guava

Why this book?

There’s so much that I have to learn about Vietnamese history, as well as the history of my own family before we left Vietnam in the early 90’s. Sadly, my Vietnamese language skills are limited, and this makes it hard for me to ask for and understand all the stories my grandparents can share with me about the years leading up to the Vietnam war. So, I was thrilled to read this beautiful novel about a family in 20th century Vietnam, giving me a glimpse into a place and time that I want to learn more about.

This multi-generational story highlights major events like the Japanese occupation, land reforms, the war, and its aftermath. I kept thinking about my family the entire time I was reading it. Where were my grandparents or parents during these major events? What were they doing? How did they feel? I need to do a better job of exploring and documenting my own family history.

In writing this deeply moving novel, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai advocates for cross-cultural understanding and empathy to avoid future wars. One of the most powerful things in this story was the portrayal of characters who offer compassion and forgiveness to those who have inflicted great losses on them – especially when those “enemies” are not from other countries, but are fellow neighbors, friends, or family. While the memory of the Vietnam War lasts beyond its end, I think this story helps us take a step towards understanding and healing.

Why this drink?

I am pairing this book with a simplified adaptation of the Liquid Culture blog’s Mama Guava cocktail, in honor of the protagonist. Guava and coconut are also commonly found in Vietnam, while the spices infuse the drink with some wintery holiday vibes.

grandma’s guava

ingredients:
1.75 oz coconut rum
0.75 oz guava juice
0.3 oz lemon
0.25 oz winter spice syrup
1 oz water
2 dashes angostura bitters

garnish:
ground nutmeg, Vietnamese cinnamon stick, and Thai basil

  1. To make the winter syrup, bring 1 part water and 1 part sugar to boil with a dash of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and vanilla extract.
  2. Combine the syrup with all other ingredients in a shaker, and shake with ice.
  3. Strain into a glass with fresh ice and garnish.

Another round, please! 🥂
You might also like:
Marisel Vera’s The Taste of Sugar (2020)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

📖The Vanishing Half: 🍸twin sister

gin, novel

📖: Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (2020)
🍸: twin sister

Why this book?

This novel begins as a story of two biracial twin sisters, Stella and Desiree, who leave their small black community in Louisiana for New Orleans. One day, Stella suddenly vanishes to live a secret life passing as a white woman. While Stella and Desiree’s lives increasingly diverge over time, they are inextricably bound together by unanswered questions, grief, longing, and ultimately, their daughters.

“Why wouldn’t you be white if you could be?” Stella thinks as she reflects back on her life. “Remaining what you were or becoming something new, it was all a choice, any way you looked at it. [Stella] had just made the rational decision.”

Beyond the sisters’ plot line, this is a broader, multigenerational story of transformation. Other characters also dramatically change — some by choice, and others not. There are individuals who undergo gender transitions, strive for socioeconomic mobility, become single parents, lose their memory due to illness, or turn into abusive partners. The premise captivated me from the beginning, and when I got to the end, I still wanted to know more about the characters, who were each so textured and full of humanity. Especially Jude and Reese and Early.

The book left me with many questions on identity. How do we see and define ourselves in a world that values only whiteness? How much of our choice to transform is rooted in self-love, self-acceptance, or self-hate? Whatever we choose to be, how much of that choice should be judged as right or wrong (or even judged at all)?

Why this drink?

I’m pairing this novel with a gin & tonic because Stella enjoys lounging in her pool with a gin soda-like drink in hand. I also chose this drink for its transparency, which, like Stella, seems to vanish in to its surroundings.

twin sister

ingredients:
2 oz gin
4 oz tonic water

garnish:
two lime wheels

  1. pour gin and tonic over ice
  2. stir and add more tonic water, if desired
  3. add two lime wheels (one for each twin!)

Another round, please! 🥂
You might also like:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

And check out The Vanishing Half Book Club Kit, which includes its own custom cocktail pairing! 😍

📖How Much of These Hills is Gold: 🍸gold grass

novel, whiskey

📖: C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills is Gold (2020)
🍸: gold grass

Why this book?

“This land is not your land.” This is the epigraph that opens this luminous novel about two orphaned Chinese American siblings that venture through the American West, in search of a new home.

But no matter where they go, they are still outsiders, and even though they were born on this land, they are excluded from owning any of it. On top of it all, the land was stolen from Indigenous Peoples, so it was never theirs to claim in the first place.

In a word, this novel was poignant. In thinking about my experiences as an immigrant in America, I related to Lucy and Sam’s feelings of being “othered” in the only place that feels like home. Like the children, I want that unquestionable sense of belonging, but it can remain elusive.

Another part of the novel that I kept thinking about was Lucy’s rejection of Ba’s fantastical tales about the land before the gold miners’ arrival. She favors the neatly packaged history she learns in school. Maybe because this sanitized version of history gives her hope that she can still find her place in this country. Or maybe it allows her to feel that her family isn’t also implicated in exploiting the land, despite their prospecting activities.

This aspect of the novel made me reflect on Baldwin, Coates, and Laymon’s idea of how much our country wants to avoid the truth behind our history, and in doing so, defines who can and can’t belong here. The versions of history we choose to believe indeed matter.

I love that this novel centers the experience of a Chinese American family in the West. And I appreciated that their narrative is complicated by the knowledge of how Indigenous Peoples are impacted as the family searches for prosperity. What does it mean to belong to a land that doesn’t belong to you? I can’t wait to see what C Pam Zhang will write next.

Why this drink?

I’m pairing this novel with the Gold Rush cocktail since this period sets the stage for the story.

gold grass

ingredients:
2 oz bourbon
0.75 oz lemon juice
0.75 oz honey syrup

garnish:
lemon peel and rosemary

  1. to make the honey syrup, heat 3 parts honey with 1 part water over the stove until the mixture dissolves into a syrup
  2. combine all ingredients in a shaker, and shake with ice
  3. strain into a chilled glass with fresh ice and garnish with lemon and rosemary

Another round, please! 🥂
You might also like:
Wendy Law-Yone’s The Coffin Tree (1983)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

And check out this interview with C Pam Zhang to learn more about How Much of These Hills is Gold:

📖Leave the World Behind: 🍸clarity

novel, vodka

📖: Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind (2020)
🍸: clarity

Why this book?

This is the kind of book where you know what’s going to happen (broadly), but you don’t really know what’s actually happening. 🤔

Two families — strangers to each other — are sequestered in an isolated AirBnb home in the woods of Long Island. They know that NYC has lost all power but don’t know what kind of danger they are in. There’s no access to information. So WHAT exactly is happening?

Could it be an act of war, environmental disaster, or pandemic? The author drops frequent commentary on the declining state of the world to lead us to speculate just as much as the characters do. The expanding sense of foreboding kept me engaged throughout the book, even when I didn’t find any satisfying answers.

By the end, I felt that the book is less interested in uncovering the source of the crisis, than it is in posing bigger questions about life and the world that we’ve created:

  • How do we live our life when the end may be near, but don’t know how or when it will come? 
  • How much of our humanity or inhumanity do we reveal in times of crisis? 
  • Can we truly prevent the end of the world? If the warning signs have been hidden in plain sight all along, how have we blinded ourselves from seeing this truth? 

I recommend this if you’re in the mood for a story with major pandemic vibes and ambiguous plot lines. Or if you want to read a book with lots of uncommonly used words to brush up on your vocab (great for GRE prep or NYT crosswords! 🤓). Overall, the story was effective in urging me to fully focus on the present — because what else can you do when everything as you know it is at stake?

Why this drink?

This novel’s pairing is a vodka martini because I suspect the family members are drinking some variation of this cocktail as they nervously wait for news. One of them had bought a bottle of Tito’s from the grocery store, which ends up being served with ice and lemon. A couple rounds of these will definitely help with leaving the world behind.

clarity

ingredients:
2 oz vodka
1 oz dry vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters

garnish:
lemon peel

  1. combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir well
  2. strain and serve in a chilled glass
  3. express the lemon peel and garnish the drink with it

Another round, please! 🥂
You might also like:
Ling Ma’s Severance (2018)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

📖There There & Winter Counts:🍸apple pomegranate autumn punch

novel, whiskey

📖: Tommy Orange’s There There (2018)
📖: David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts (2020)
🍸: apple pomegranate autumn punch

How are you celebrating Thanksgiving this year?

While some of us may be celebrating Thanksgiving today, it’s also important to acknowledge that it is National Day of Mourning for some Indigenous Peoples, such as those who are a part of the United American Indians of New England, for whom “Thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands, and the relentless assault on Native culture. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.”
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UAINE will be live-streaming the 51st Annual National Day of Mourning today at 12PM EST at www.uaine.org. On this site, there’s a list of other things we can do to support Indigenous Peoples not only today, but every day of the year – from donations to climate advocacy.
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If you do gather for Thanksgiving, UAINE suggests doing a reading before your meal about the truth behind the first Thanksgiving, recommending Matthew Hughey’s article “ON THANKSGIVING: WHY MYTHS MATTER.” UAINE also recommends the books OUR HISTORY IS THE FUTURE by Nick Estes or David Stannard’s AMERICAN HOLOCAUST: COLUMBUS & THE CONQUEST OF THE NEW WORLD.
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Featured in my photo are Tommy Orange’s stunningly moving novel There There, and Winter Counts, a new crime novel by David Heska Wanbli Weiden. Both are excellent #ownvoices stories on the contemporary experiences of people from several Indigenous Nations. I can’t recommend them enough – especially since November is also #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth.
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However you’ll observe today, I hope you are staying safe and feeling renewed by and connected to your loved ones — in a socially distant or virtual way!

*Note: The beverage featured here is adapted from the blog HOW SWEEET EATS’s Sparkling Pomegranate Cider Punch recipe.

apple pomegranate autumn punch

ingredients:
1.5 oz bourbon (optional)
3 oz apple cider
2 oz pomegranate juice
2 oz ginger beer
1 tsp autumn syrup, to taste*

for garnish:
apple slices, pomegranate seeds, cinnamon stick, and a cinnamon sugar rim

  1. rim your glass with the autumn syrup and coat it with a cinnamon sugar mix
  2. combine all ingredients with ice and stir well (You can add bourbon, if desired, but it’s tasty on its own, without the spirit.)
  3. strain out the ice and serve in glass with fresh ice
  4. garnish with apple slices, pomegranate seeds, and a cinnamon stick

*How to make the autumn syrup:
Heat these ingredients in a small saucepan on the stove, and stir until just boiling: 1 part brown sugar, 1 part water, pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon, star anise, and a few pieces of orange rind. Remove from heat and let cool before adding to the punch mixture.

Let’s discuss!

Finished the books? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

📖The Handmaid’s Tale: 🍸mayday

beer, novel

📖: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
🍸: mayday

Why this book?

With Halloween around the corner (and Election Day shortly after), what I’m really scared of is living in a country where people’s lives aren’t protected or represented, especially those who have been historically marginalized.

This week’s news included the Supreme Court confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. I’m worried about what will happen to our reproductive rights and access to healthcare (and immigration and racial equity and LGBTQ+ rights and the list goes on…). Atwood’s dystopian world of Gilead has always felt bleak and foreboding, but it feels especially terrifying now. Are we already living in our own dystopia?

What makes Gilead really scary is the amount of complicity and corruption of power it takes to create such a world. The novel makes me reflect on how we, as individuals, may be (knowingly or unknowingly) complicit in upholding structural injustices and exploitation, through both our actions or inactions. How can we best resist? While that depends for each of us personally, it’s important to remember that no act of resistance is too small. It all adds up. Just like our votes in this critical election. Will you join in early voting and encourage others to do so too?

Despite these somber musings, I think it’s still important for us to find rest, comfort, and joy however we can during these tough times. While this is not a “usual” review, I still hope you’ll enjoy the pairing since many of us won’t socialize in person this Halloween (which I normally would have loved to celebrate with friends). Stay safe, and take good care of yourself!

Why this drink?

For this pairing, I chose a drink that had the same deep crimson color as the handmaid’s robes, and the name Mayday comes from the handmaids’ underground network of resisters.

This drink is the Pomegranate Blood Orange Shandy recipe by Ashley Rose Conway. For the drink I made here, I slightly tweaked the proportions — you can see my substitutions and modifications in the tweaked recipe below.

mayday

ingredients:
6 oz blood orange shandy beer
2 oz ginger beer
3 oz pomegranate juice
1 oz blood orange or orange juice, freshly squeezed

for garnish:
rosemary sprig

  1. combine all ingredients except the shandy beer and stir well
  2. top off with the beer
  3. serve in a chilled glass
  4. garnish with a sprig of rosemary (smack the rosemary before serving to release its oils and aroma)

Quarantine substitutions:
*The original recipe calls for wheat beer, but I used a blood orange shandy instead. As long as the beer is wheat based, it should be good.
*The original recipe calls for blood orange juice, but I used freshly squeezed regular navel orange juice instead and it turned out great.
*I changed the proportions by adding more pomegranate juice and using less beer. The original recipe called for 8 oz of beer and only 1 oz of pom juice.

Another round, please! 🥂

You might also like:
Leni Zumas’ Red Clocks (2018)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

📖The Son of Good Fortune: 🍸hello city

mezcal, novel

📖: Lysley Tenorio’s The Son of Good Fortune (2020)
🍸: hello city

Why this book?

“I’m not here, I’m not really here.” Excel repeats this mantra to himself to escape from the present and become invisible. From an early age, Excel has learned that he and his mother Maxima are undocumented immigrants from the Philippines.

With his secrecy and fear, teenaged Excel feels like he can only go so far. He works at a local pizza shop, lives at home with Maxima instead of going to college, and spends most nights on the roof of their apartment alone. He lives by a freeway that has two Targets on either side, and one day, he walks from one storefront to the other, counting the 1,084 steps he took to “just to get to a place exactly the same as where [he] started.”

So when Excel sees an opportunity to move to Hello City with his new girlfriend, he takes it. He leaves Maxima behind without looking back, but circumstances force him to return to reconcile with his mother and reflect on the choices they’ve made and will continue to make as a family.

For me, this poignant novel felt like a modern spin on “The Prodigal Son,” with a focus on what it means to belong, be seen, and self-determine one’s future in a country where being undocumented is criminalized. Lysley Tenorio’s prose is clear and straightforward, and he balances the gravitas of this story with quirky details, wry humor, and a curious prologue that draws you in.

The portrayal of Excel and Maxima’s relationship was especially moving for me because Maxima — with her resourcefulness, sacrifices, and conviction — reminded me of my own mom, who immigrated to the US as a single parent. Maxima is such a multi-layered and unique character, and I still wanted to learn more about her by the time I reached the last page.

October is also Filipino American History Month, so I highly recommend picking up this novel and then following it up with Lysley Tenorio’s debut book Monstress if you haven’t yet!

Why this drink?

For this pairing, I chose a recipe with calamansi as a nod to Maxima and Excel’s Filipino roots. (This recipe comes from the now-closed Krystal’s Cafe 81 in NYC.)

hello city

ingredients:
1.5 oz mezcal
0.5 oz Cointreau
1 oz lime juice
1 oz calamansi juice
0.5 oz agave syrup
splash of orange juice

for garnish:
lime or calamansi wheel

  1. combine all other ingredients in a shaker, and shake with ice
  2. serve with ice
  3. garnish with a lime or calamansi wheel

Quarantine substitutions:
*If you don’t have any calamansi juice, you can sub it out for freshly squeezed orange juice.
*If you don’t have any agave syrup, use a simple or demerara syrup instead.

Another round, please! 🥂

You might also like:
Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

📖The Taste of Sugar: 🍸strawberry girl & 🍸 coffee farmer

novel, rum, whiskey

📖: Marisel Vera’s The Taste of Sugar (2020)
🍸: strawberry girl
🍸: coffee farmer

Why this book?

The Taste of Sugar is an exquisite novel that spans three generations of a coffee farming family in Puerto Rico, from 1825 to 1902. It reminded me a bit of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, in the way that the story is multi-generational in scope, with a focus on the themes of emigration, inequality, war, exile, exploitation, and family.

At the heart of the novel is a love story between Valentina Sanchez and her husband Vicente Vega. We follow them through the joys and challenges of raising a family and cultivating a coffee farm in the mountains. Soon, the Spanish-American War, US invasion of Puerto Rico, and the San Ciriaco Hurricane bring major changes, prompting them to emigrate – along with over five thousand other Puerto Ricans – to work on the cane sugar plantations of Hawaii where they hope to gain greater economic opportunity.

In telling this story, Marisel Vera interrupts the flow of her third-person narrative with passages told in the first-person POV, keeping the story fresh and engaging. She includes letters that Valentina exchanges with her sister, along with short monologues from a handful of characters. I sped through the pages, and was sad when I got to the last one! I was deeply moved by the love and resilience of the Vegas’ relationship, and wanted to continue following the story of their family’s life in Hawaii. I highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about Puerto Rican history, which I did not know very much about until I began reading this novel.

Why this drink?

For The Taste of Sugar, I made two drinks: one for Vicente, the coffee farmer, and Valentina, who he affectionately calls his “strawberry girl” (because of the strawberry-scented powder she wore on the night they met). I used cane sugar and rum as a common ingredient in both cocktails, since both prominently appear throughout the novel. Vicente’s drink is adapted from Cafe Correcto con Coco recipe on Liquor.com.

strawberry girl

ingredients:
0.75 oz white rum
0.75 oz black spiced rum
1 oz lime juice
0.5 oz demerara cane sugar syrup
1 – 2 oz seltzer water to top off 
3 strawberries
fresh mint

for garnish:
fresh mint & strawberries

  1. muddle the mint and strawberries in a shaker with a pinch of cane sugar
  2. combine all other ingredients in a shaker, and shake with ice
  3. serve with ice
  4. garnish with strawberry and mint

coffee farmer

ingredients:
0.75 oz black spiced rum
0.75 oz whiskey
1 oz black coffee
0.5 oz demerara cane sugar syrup
1 oz coconut milk

for garnish:
demerara cane sugar

  1. combine all ingredients, except for coconut milk, into a mixing glass, and stir with ice
  2. rim glass with cane sugar
  3. serve mixture in the glass with ice
  4. top off with coconut milk

Another round, please! 🥂

You might also like:
Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko (2017)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

📖Fruit of the Drunken Tree: 🍸the salty fruit

novel, rum

📖: Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s Fruit of the Drunken Tree (2018)
🍸: the salty fruit

Why this book?

Fruit of the Drunken Tree is a novel about two girls growing up in Colombia in the late 80’s-early 90’s. The story alternates between the perspectives of seven-year-old Chula and her family’s new live-in maid Petrona. Both become friends, but as political instability and violence increases in Colombia during Pablo Escobar’s reign, their loyalties to each other become tested.

Much of this story is centered on the act of remembering and forgetting, and making sense of what is real and unreal – all through the lens of childhood. While the subject matter is very heavy, the author’s prose is lyrical and vivid, making many of the details feel very immersive and palpable. I only wished that there were more chapters from Petrona’s POV since most of the book is told in Chula’s voice. Overall, this was a compelling and poignant story about how two girls from two different socioeconomic classes came of age by grappling with the loss of innocence, choice, and home.

Why this drink?

I used Theo Lieberman and Lauren Schell’s Salty Bird Cocktail recipe for this pairing because Chula becomes obsessed with salt once her family flees Colombia as refugees. She would eat salt, wash her hands with salt, and smell it everywhere she goes, to the point where salt was all she could write about in her final letter to Petrona. This novel doesn’t close with a neat, happily-ever-after, but it did evoke emotions that lingered long after I finished the book – just like how the essence of salt stays with Chula.

the salty fruit

ingredients:

0.75 oz Campari
1.5 oz black rum
1.5 oz pineapple juice
0.5 oz lime juice
0.5 oz simple syrup

for garnish:
pinch of salt
dehydrated pineapple

  1. combine all ingredients in a shaker and shake with ice
  2. serve with ice
  3. garnish with a pinch of salt and a piece of dehydrated pineapple

Another round, please! 🥂

You might also like:
Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Let’s discuss!

Finished the book? What did you think about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!