An excerpt from
my book, The Chopsticks-Fork
Principle, A Memoir and Manual ~ Cheers, Cathy Bao Bean
www.cathybaobean.com
“Zany, moving, hilarious, and deep--not
infrequently all at once—
Cathy Bao Bean gives us a rollicking tour of the Bean method of
merging work and play while negotiating cultural and
generational divides to create a daily life far richer than its original
constituent parts. As Cathy the Chinese Confucian philosophy professor
declares war on mice, Bennett the Caucasian artist from
mid-America announces “his increasing respect for all sentient beings.”
As he discovers more of his Buddhist nature, she becomes “more and
more like Shiva, ‘The Destroyer.’” Bennett designs a kitchen, Cathy
notices that he’s neglected to include a stove, leaving their son
William to rebel against his hippie parents by dressing like his father
only on Halloween.
Cathy Bao Bean has written a tart, feisty, whimsical,
and penetrating saga of the family that invented the Chopsticks-Fork
Principle and then proceeded to live by it. No reader can leave
this book satisfied with the relatively staid life he or she had on
opening it.”
Celia
Morris, author of Fanny Wright:
Rebel in America and
Finding Celia's Place
“…Bao
Bean's postwar adventures evoke the
America of Breakfast
at Tiffany's and Auntie Mame. If these stories...remind us of nothing
so much as the picaresque, we remember that the picaresque is the single
most characteristic genre of postwar literature.”
Ralph V. Norman,
editor of Soundings, An
Interdisciplinary Journal
“This
book does for the mind what "sweet and sour" does for the palate.
It is spicy and poignant, it takes your breath away and leaves
you hungering for more.”
Carol R. Ochs,
author of Our Lives as Torah
“Cathy
Bao Bean writes as she speaks--with verve, flair, and bounce. Anyone
with half an ear and one good eye will enjoy reading this book.”
Merrill Maguire Skaggs, Baldwin Professor
of Humanities, Drew University
