Festival Appearance:
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York-based writer whose memoir A Tiger in the Kitchen (Hyperion) is about rediscovering her Singaporean family by returning home to learn to cook with them. A native of Singapore, Tan was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and The Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Marie Claire, Family Circle, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Chicago Tribune and The Oregonian. In March/April 2010 and also in December 2010, she was an artist in residence at the Yaddo artists' colony, where she completed her memoir.
A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, 2011
After growing up in the most food-obsessed city in the world, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left home and family at eighteen for America -- proof of the rebelliousness of daughters born in the Year of the Tiger. But as a thirty-something fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers’ and aunties’ kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before? In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations.
A Tiger in the Kitchen, which includes ten authentic recipes for Singaporean classics such as pineapple tarts and Teochew braised duck, is the charming, beautifully written story of a Chinese-Singaporean ex-pat who learns to infuse her New York lifestyle with the rich lessons of the Singaporean kitchen, ultimately reconnecting with her family and herself.
Reviews:
"Written in the tradition of two classic but different memoirs, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior (1976) and Julie Powell's Julie & Julia (2005), the book is a recipe in itself -- a dash of conjuring the ancient stories of one's past, a sprinkling of culinary narrative. The result is a literary treat....A delightful take on the relationship between food, family and tradition."
-- Kirkus Reviews.
"Her prose is breezy, and her descriptions of duck soup and pineapple tarts entice. But the meat in this memoir is what Tan learns about her resilient family, whose members come together both to cook and to heal."
-- People magazine.
"This memoir is less controversial, more inspirational than Amy Chua's fiery book on Chinese parenting....Tan's tiger qualities reveal themselves in her fierce determination to draw her past into her present, to slow down, to learn how to make the food of her childhood." -- Los Angeles Times.
"Tan's A Tiger in the Kitchen is reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, yet the author's determination to master her grandmothers' and aunts’ recipes also echoes the triumphs and struggles in Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia. Above all, A Tiger in the Kitchen is a tale of reconnecting with family and tradition -- with the fried rice and flaky pineapple tarts that define Singaporean culture -- and of food's sensorial power to connect us to our pasts."
-- The Daily Beast.
