Simple Recipes Analysis

Words: 515
Pages: 3

Simple Recipes written by Madeleine Thien is told in the first person, a woman's childhood memories of her newly immigrant family. Beautifully told it begins with describing her father preparing rice for dinner. With simple sentences and calm cadence Thien brings the reader into the comfort and warmth of the kitchen. A loving bond between father and daughter is developed with a vision of shared pleasures through the ritual of cooking. He is described as patient, forgiving, supportive, and attentive. Watching TV together, he is shown to have a sense of humour. Her adoration for him is displayed as she describes them walking home from school matching their strides, walking as a single unit.

Conflict is first hinted at with the introduction of her brother, who stays away from home with his soccer ball and refuses to speak his native tongue. As her narrative continues her brother is portrayed as the source of discord, he brings in dirt, appears to be disrespectful and ungrateful for what was so lovingly prepared. He refuses to eat the fish. Her father again is portrayed as patient as he merely shrugs his shoulders to this.

As I continued to read I began to think that this was to be a story of loss of culture: the
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The narrators question to herself "How to reconcile all that I know of him and still love him?" resonates, as the reader too began to know her father as someone who was kind and loving and then finds it hard to reconcile that with the violence shown during the beating. A dichotomy made even more poignant with the offering by the father to the son of French Toast. We share her grief and confusion. For me, the imagery and composure with which it was told was painfully poetic. "Somewhere in my memory, a fish is dying slowly. My father and I watch as the water runs