Category: rum

📖: Eric Nguyen’s Things We Lost to the Water (2021)
🍸: the bayou

Why this book?

This novel begins with Hương, a Vietnamese refugee who resettles alone in New Orleans with her two sons, after leaving Vietnam by boat. Before her escape, she and her husband Công had been running towards the ocean, hand-in-hand, to reach the vessel that would take them away, but she somehow loses hold of him and Công gets left behind. What happened to him?

The shadows of memories, questions, and secrets haunt Hương and her sons as the years pass without contact from Công. Hương protects Tuấn and Bình by telling them their father is gone, but each son, in his own way, keeps tracing a path back to finding Công and the home they lost.

One memorable moment in the book is when Hương encounters a young half-Vietnamese man in her nail salon near closing hours. He says he’s looking for his American father, who he thinks may still be somewhere in New Orleans – has Hương seen him?

Huong feels sorry for this man, thinking that “what is lost is perhaps best forgotten. The past is the past.” But is it truly? As a member of the diaspora, sometimes the past feels so much like the present and the future. So much so that looking backwards is the only way to move forward.

This book was deeply poignant in its exploration of how children can carry on the burden of loss and trauma of the generation that came before. And how this experience of post-memory can drive them to keep turning back to a past that their elders may want to forget. Cyclical in nature, this story ends where it begins – with water, displacement from home, and the loss of a father – and I was captivated the whole way through. This novel is a beautiful debut, and I look forward to reading whatever Eric Nguyen writes next!

Thank you to Knopf for sending me an ARC of this book!

Why this drink?

Eric Nguyen – this cocktail pairing was created for you as a gift from Michael Nguyen to celebrate the publication of your novel. It’s inspired by Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane cocktail from New Orleans. Congratulations and cheers to you on this very special #PubDay! 🥂

the bayou

ingredients:
2 oz black spiced rum
1.5 oz lite rum
1.5 oz passion fruit juice
1 oz blood orange juice
0.5 oz lime juice
0.5 oz ginger syrup*

garnish:
Thai basil, blood orange slice, fresh longan fruit (if available)

1. Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice, and shake well.
2. Strain into a glass packed with freshly crushed ice.
3. Garnish with a leafy sprig of Thai basil, a blood orange wheel, and 1-2 peeled longan fruit, if available.

*How to make ginger syrup:
Heat 1 cup thinly sliced fresh ginger, 3/4 cup sugar, and 3/4 cup water on stovetop until boiling. Simmer on low heat for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let the ginger seep until the syrup cools. Strain out the ginger. Store syrup in an airtight jar, and store in the fridge.

Another round, please! 🥂
You might also like:
Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

Let’s discuss!

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

📖: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005)
🍸: the carer

Why this book?

Like Atonement, I saw the movie adaptation of Never Let Me Go before reading the book. The movie is really good at capturing the emotional depth of the book. But, if you haven’t read the novel yet, you must! Ishiguro’s craft and storytelling are excellent.

There’s not a lot I can say about this dystopian sci-fi story without spoiling it. It begins at a special school for children. Nothing about this place initially seems too out of the ordinary, but once you uncover the shocking truth that underpins Cathy, Tommy, and Ruth’s lives, you won’t want to let this book go until the last page.

In a way, the world that Ishiguro builds is not so different from ours, which makes it even more unsettling. The story explores themes around our own complicity in systems of social hierarchies. What does it mean to be “human”? Whose lives are most valuable? Are our fates predetermined by the circumstances we’re born into? And can the benefits of scientific advancement justify how we answer these questions?

Why this drink?

I made a Painkiller cocktail for this book because there’s a lot of pain in this novel — both physical and existential. The characters spend some time on a beach, though it’s not a tropical one to match this tropical drink. This story destroys me every time, so at least this beachy drink helps me pretend I’m in a brighter, happier place.

the carer

ingredients:
2 oz black spiced rum
4 oz pineapple juice
1 oz cream of coconut
1 oz orange juice

garnish:
ground nutmeg
dried or fresh pineapple

1. Shake all ingredients with ice.
2. Strain over fresh ice.
3. Add a dash of ground nutmeg on top.
4. Garnish with pineapple.

Another round, please! 🥂
You might also like:
Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001)

Let’s discuss!

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

📖: 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!

📖: 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!

📖: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015)
🍸: man of two minds

Why this book?

I picked up The Sympathizer because I was so thrilled to see a Vietnam War novel by a Vietnamese-American writer. This is one of my FAVORITE books — I still cannot stop thinking about the questions it raises, like: What do you do when you realize your complicity in destructive systems of power? What is the cost of loyalty when you subscribe to any political ideology?

This novel is narrated by a nameless half-Vietnamese, half-French Communist double agent, known as the Captain, who is sent to spy on Vietnamese refugees in California after the Fall of Saigon. In telling his story, the Captain rejects the prevalence of US-centric and imperialistic interpretations of the war, while criticizing both US and Vietnamese forces for their roles in the conflict, sparing no side from guilt. In doing so, the book challenged me to question my assumptions about all the players in this war. And on a more personal level, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s brilliant writing made me think more critically about my relationship to the US as a member of the Vietnamese diaspora.

Why this drink?

I am pairing this novel with my special version of the Dark ‘n’ Stormy – a drink with two main ingredients – to reflect the duality and inner conflict that the narrator embodies. With his mixed race background, the Captain prides himself as a “man of two minds” who can understand and manipulate the motivations of both his allies and adversaries. However, the longer he lives among his enemies in America, the more he questions his political allegiance, and ultimately, who he is as an individual. Once you begin sympathizing with another person, can you really remain unchanged? I couldn’t after finishing this novel.

FYI the sequel The Committed comes out in March! Until then, I HIGHLY recommend Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies, which provides critical theory about the memory of war that will enrich your reading and analysis of The Sympathizer!

P.S. The secret to making this tasty drink is Kraken Rum — purely coincidental and not a reference to the story’s squid incident 🦑 😂

man of two minds

ingredients:
2 oz black spiced rum*
4 oz ginger beer
1 lime wedge

*for garnish: jalapeno slices

1. combine the rum and ginger beer in a glass, and squeeze in the lime wedge
2. stir the mixture
3. add jalapeno slices and serve with ice
   
   *highly recommend using Kraken rum for your liquor base!

Another round, please! 🥂

You might also like:
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016)

Let’s discuss!

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

As we say in Vietnamese: “1, 2, 3, VÔ!” (cheers!) 🍻