Session 8 Place-Based Aesthetics: ALEX TRAN

Do food cultures define a place or the other way around?

“As mom’s cooking”: the taste of home and the formation of Vietnamese identity

In recent years, “as mom’s cooking” has become a popular term used widely in Vietnamese communities in Vietnam and elsewhere when talking about home-cooked food. The term has been used as a magical word in marketing and food writing in different senses to evoke people’s nostalgia in order to sell their products.

It is also used as a confirmation of how true/correct a thing or statement is in informal daily oral and written context. Within this context of language, literal food related or not, the mother figure and her food have been exploited extremely well to perform a heavily socio-cultural gendered duty which happens to become the aesthetic of food, eating, knowledge, and all other life’s matters to the Vietnamese. In this paper, I explore the way in which this term has been used in Vietnamese popular culture, food related subject and beyond, in forming and expressing Vietnamese’s identity, where everything must be “as mom’s cooking”.

10 comments

10 Comments

marjoz8

Jul 17, 2020

Thank you Alex. It seems that it's not just 'Mum's cooking' which is revered but that there is a lot of honour given to parents full stop. That's rather different to the ageism found in many Australian workplaces.

Alex Xuan-Bach Tran

Aug 18, 2020

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Replying to

I agree. Although the issue can go much deeper and more complex, but it's true that although Mum's cooking has become an aesthetics, it does not speak the truth about the nation's history.

André Taber

Jul 16, 2020

Excellent thought-provoking paper Alex. Thank you. At the risk of sounding a bit ignorant because I have never been to Vietnam, but I get the impression from TV that a lot of the best street food in Vietnam is made by women. How accurate is that statement? Do Vietnamese people rate their street food by the gender of the person cooking it?

Alex Xuan-Bach Tran

Aug 18, 2020

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Replying to

Hi Andres. I will answer it first from an original Vietnamese: no, we don't. We rate the street food vendor by many things, taste and experience mostly. Surely I don't need to explain further that these factors are highly personal as well as regional (regional and individual aesthetics indeed). But also, this is the view of a person who was born and raided in the South where liberal thinking has been associated with more or less (with bias for sure). From a more scholarly and historical view (and as I have mentioned briefly in the presentation), Vietnam's economy before the contact with a mass Chinese immigrant at the end of the Ming dynasty and the early Quing dynasty and later with Westerner (the French and American) was being carried by women. Gender ideology back then ranked "traders" or "business(wo)men" at the lowest and hardly any man would take part in such things unless necessary. It somehow created the mentality which connects women and food vendors which is still seen nowadays. However, there is not much evidence of when and how this happened exactly apart from a few Vietnamese officials' documents and later French colony officials's.

Beverley Laing

Jul 16, 2020

Hi Alex, you packed a lot in! Thanks for your paper with hints of ideas about myth, shifting culture of 'what is right' and 'what is good', masculine and feminine cultural roles and even the difference between the Vietnamese and Spanish TV show. You've given us lots to think about.

Alex Xuan-Bach Tran

Aug 18, 2020

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Replying to

Thanks Beverley. It's great hearing from you. I have been too busy till now ( a lockdown, sadly). I guess it is the point of the symposium. Sometimes, it is not about finding the answer or solution but to make ourself wonder upon what we have known. I'm a true believer of the idea that knowledge and idea are in the everyday life of ours, mostly get ignored but passed on by habitus in both the constrain and liberal meanings.

Adele Wessell

Jul 16, 2020

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I look forward to hearing more as you continue this research. I find it interesting that the term is connected to authority, as correct or authentic, so the power relations here seem quite complex.

Alex Xuan-Bach Tran

Aug 18, 2020

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Replying to

Thanks Adele. Of course we will talk more about this soon. The project is definitely a complex one and has hardly been explored before. That's why I got intrigued but also frustrated in looking for information, especially during a global pandemic when travel has been banned. But I will do best from my position to adjust myself and the project in some way :)

Jean Duruz

Jul 16, 2020

Alex, thank you for a very informative paper examining the gendered politics of the Vietnamese domestic kitchen and its shifting relations. I would have liked to have heard more about "mom's cooking"and changing gender relations - there are intriguing hints of this - and the rise of professional chefs in the twentieth century (and not just in reality shows as this is a sort of hyperreal situation). However, I realise that in a very short paper you can only do so much. So, thanks again.

Alex Xuan-Bach Tran

Aug 18, 2020

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Replying to

Thanks Jean! Sorry for a very late reply as it has been a very hectic time for me until now when Auckland has gone into lockdown again. Yes, it is indeed a very broad project that I am aiming for when starting this. To my knowledge, such project to examine Vietnam as a rising culinary destination has been rarely done. There is only one researcher that I know who plays some important part in this: Dr. Nir Avieli. Unfortunately he only focuses on the middle part of Vietnam which is very different form other regions and hard to tell story of the whole nation and its extended humans (given that Vietnamese are now everywhere, especially in the states and Australia). I will keep this project going and hope to accomplish more with it. Best wishes to you :)