What do you think?
Rate this book
Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes
In this powerful, touching memoir of a critically acclaimed Chinese-American writer, taste becomes the keeper of memory and food the keeper of culture when Nai-nai, her extraordinary grandmother, arrives from mainland China.
Leslie Li’s paternal grandfather, Li Zogren, was China’s first democratically elected vice president, to whom Chiang Kai-shek left control of the country when he fled to Formosa in 1949. Nine years later, Li’s wife, Nai-nai, comes to live with her son’s family in New York City, bringing a whole new world of sights, smells, and tastes as she quickly takes control of the kitchen. Nai-nai’s tantalizingly exotic cooking opens up the heart and mind of her American granddaughter to her Chinese heritage—and to the world. Through her grandmother’s traditional cuisine Leslie bridges the cultural divide in an America in which she is a minority—as well as the growing gap at home between her rigid, traditional Chinese father and her progressive American-born mother. Interspersed throughout her intimate and moving memoir are the author’s personal recipes, most from Nai-nai’s kitchen, that add a delicious dimension to the work. A loving ode to family and food, Daughter of Heaven is an exquisite blend of memory, history, and the senses.
Leslie Li’s paternal grandfather, Li Zogren, was China’s first democratically elected vice president, to whom Chiang Kai-shek left control of the country when he fled to Formosa in 1949. Nine years later, Li’s wife, Nai-nai, comes to live with her son’s family in New York City, bringing a whole new world of sights, smells, and tastes as she quickly takes control of the kitchen. Nai-nai’s tantalizingly exotic cooking opens up the heart and mind of her American granddaughter to her Chinese heritage—and to the world. Through her grandmother’s traditional cuisine Leslie bridges the cultural divide in an America in which she is a minority—as well as the growing gap at home between her rigid, traditional Chinese father and her progressive American-born mother. Interspersed throughout her intimate and moving memoir are the author’s personal recipes, most from Nai-nai’s kitchen, that add a delicious dimension to the work. A loving ode to family and food, Daughter of Heaven is an exquisite blend of memory, history, and the senses.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
84 people are currently reading
240 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
February 26, 2013
I picked up Daughter of Heaven from the dollar store a few weeks ago. It looked like a memoir about food, and even had the added bonus of real Chinese food recipes. All that for $1? Why not?
It turned out to be a book relating the events of the author's life as they revolved around food. Some chapters were sumptuous and fabulous in description, others were mini-essays about the ancient history of China, and others on the author's strong dislike for her father.
Halfway through the book, I determined it was a waste of my time. While not poorly written, it's not something I feel warrants me keeping it just for the recipes. I could turn it in for trade credit at my local used bookstore and get a memoir I'll want to read over and over again.
Li has a poor sense of time continuity, but a great sense of description, environment, and emotional setting. Foodies won't enjoy this book as much as Chinese History buffs.
Support your local library!
It turned out to be a book relating the events of the author's life as they revolved around food. Some chapters were sumptuous and fabulous in description, others were mini-essays about the ancient history of China, and others on the author's strong dislike for her father.
Halfway through the book, I determined it was a waste of my time. While not poorly written, it's not something I feel warrants me keeping it just for the recipes. I could turn it in for trade credit at my local used bookstore and get a memoir I'll want to read over and over again.
Li has a poor sense of time continuity, but a great sense of description, environment, and emotional setting. Foodies won't enjoy this book as much as Chinese History buffs.
Support your local library!
September 3, 2023
It took me a while to get into this book because it's overly verbose and I could have used a thesaurus while reading. The imagery is lovely though, as were her stories about culture and family dynamics.
It's always comforting when an author can put something you've experienced into words ("he was punishing me for my play, my ability to take pleasure in the preferred society of my friends instead of the forced familiarity of the Chinese relatives and associates. My friends were American" p. 77-78). I wonder if this is a trend of Chinese parents, or simply a personal parenting style.
It's always comforting when an author can put something you've experienced into words ("he was punishing me for my play, my ability to take pleasure in the preferred society of my friends instead of the forced familiarity of the Chinese relatives and associates. My friends were American" p. 77-78). I wonder if this is a trend of Chinese parents, or simply a personal parenting style.
July 13, 2009
Maybe I was biased from the start, since in the introduction the author clearly states that she "recoils from the kitchen" and has better things to do than hunt down ingredients from gourmet stores. Nothing quite like insulting the most likely audience for your book. The book lacks structure, the author jumps around from story to story, sometimes interrupting herself with a random memory or flashback. She is terribly into metaphor, so much so that when she wants to tell you something is really happening, she writes the sentence - Literally. Her hatred of her father, while perhaps understandable, is quite ugly to read. She spends plenty of time in this memoir recounting her writing of her novel, Bittersweet, and I was aggravated by the shilling. Lady, I'll read your other book, IF I want to. Maybe the recipes are great, but I'm so glad to be done reading this, it's going straight back to the library.
June 4, 2018
I loved this book for the author's fascinating family history and the mouth-watering recipes she included.
October 12, 2021
The lines between autobiography and memoir are sometimes very blurred for me, but this is one of those books that is very clearly memoir. Vast swathes of Li's life are left out here, but then she's not telling her life story, really. She's telling the story of food in her life, and the place of food here is essentially that of metaphor and emotion, linking aspects of her family experiences to her increasing exploration of her own identity. That identity, part of a Chinese immigrant family in the US, simultaneously part of both cultures and not entirely belonging to either, changes over time as Li becomes more interested in her Chinese roots.
That in itself isn't a particularly original story. It's one that many people live every day, but what makes this book so interesting is the sustained focus on food as a lens by which identity can be examined. (There are a handful of recipes included, scattered at the end of most chapters, and if my vegetarian self, who shares Li's childhood hatred of bok choy, isn't going to be making many of these for myself, I'm still a person who enjoys cooking and enjoys seeing how other people do it.) Li uses food to illustrate everything from the competition between first and second wives to festival celebrations, and for many of the memories collected here, food is the means of bringing together relationships that are often very strained indeed. There's a wonderful line: "Writing memoir involves observing people making you suffer and, usually much later, discovering what it is they've suffered that makes them insist you suffer too" (p. 219). As present as the relationship between daughter and mother and grandmother is here, the primary conflict is between Li and her father, and the slow uncovering of understanding that develops is perhaps more unidirectional than one would like, but is still immensely sympathetic to read.
That in itself isn't a particularly original story. It's one that many people live every day, but what makes this book so interesting is the sustained focus on food as a lens by which identity can be examined. (There are a handful of recipes included, scattered at the end of most chapters, and if my vegetarian self, who shares Li's childhood hatred of bok choy, isn't going to be making many of these for myself, I'm still a person who enjoys cooking and enjoys seeing how other people do it.) Li uses food to illustrate everything from the competition between first and second wives to festival celebrations, and for many of the memories collected here, food is the means of bringing together relationships that are often very strained indeed. There's a wonderful line: "Writing memoir involves observing people making you suffer and, usually much later, discovering what it is they've suffered that makes them insist you suffer too" (p. 219). As present as the relationship between daughter and mother and grandmother is here, the primary conflict is between Li and her father, and the slow uncovering of understanding that develops is perhaps more unidirectional than one would like, but is still immensely sympathetic to read.
September 16, 2024
It’s not surprising that food and cultural heritage are so closely tied together. Add to this pot a Chinese American daughter who with her family attempts to assimilate versus maintaining traditional values.
The food of grandmother Nai-nai, besides whetting the appetite of author Leslie Li, evokes memories which otherwise would have remained dormant. By anointing her tongue with familiarity, Nai-nai awakens her mind to recall in Li’s “Daughter of Heaven, A Memoir with Earthly Recipes.”
That identity, part of a Chinese immigrant family in the US, simultaneously part of both cultures and not entirely belonging to either, changes over time as Li explores her Chinese roots.
Watching the aging Nai-nai sharpen her cleaver “with the single-mindedness of an axe murderer” or dodging traffic to access the vegetable garden she has installed on the median of a nearby expressway, the author begins to examine the relationship of the art of cooking to the integrity of a Chinese household. Knowledge is imparted with every meal.
As a bonus 19 recipes of Nai-nai are included.
I highly recommend this author’s description of food’s impact on her upbringing with often poignant memories of a stern father who could never quite bridge the cultural divide between himself and an essentially American daughter.
The food of grandmother Nai-nai, besides whetting the appetite of author Leslie Li, evokes memories which otherwise would have remained dormant. By anointing her tongue with familiarity, Nai-nai awakens her mind to recall in Li’s “Daughter of Heaven, A Memoir with Earthly Recipes.”
That identity, part of a Chinese immigrant family in the US, simultaneously part of both cultures and not entirely belonging to either, changes over time as Li explores her Chinese roots.
Watching the aging Nai-nai sharpen her cleaver “with the single-mindedness of an axe murderer” or dodging traffic to access the vegetable garden she has installed on the median of a nearby expressway, the author begins to examine the relationship of the art of cooking to the integrity of a Chinese household. Knowledge is imparted with every meal.
As a bonus 19 recipes of Nai-nai are included.
I highly recommend this author’s description of food’s impact on her upbringing with often poignant memories of a stern father who could never quite bridge the cultural divide between himself and an essentially American daughter.
June 29, 2024
Het heeft me bijna een half jaar gekost om dit boek uit te lezen. Want dat wilde ik toch echt wel doen. Een DNF vond ik te ver gaan.
Lezen & eten is een combinatie waar ik me wel in kan vinden. En dat beloofde de voorflap van dit boek: Culinaire memoires met traditionele Chinese recepten. Er waren verhalen die me in hun greep hielden, maar het overgrote merendeel ervan moest keer op keer opnieuw lezen omdat ik de stukjes niet aan elkaar geknoopt kreeg. Er ontbrak een lijn in het geheel, waardoor het een moeizame leeservaring werd. Het concept was echter wel heel origineel, waarvoor mijn ene ster. De tweede ster is voor de verhalen die me wel wisten te raken en voor de gedetailleerde recepten.
Lezen & eten is een combinatie waar ik me wel in kan vinden. En dat beloofde de voorflap van dit boek: Culinaire memoires met traditionele Chinese recepten. Er waren verhalen die me in hun greep hielden, maar het overgrote merendeel ervan moest keer op keer opnieuw lezen omdat ik de stukjes niet aan elkaar geknoopt kreeg. Er ontbrak een lijn in het geheel, waardoor het een moeizame leeservaring werd. Het concept was echter wel heel origineel, waarvoor mijn ene ster. De tweede ster is voor de verhalen die me wel wisten te raken en voor de gedetailleerde recepten.
November 30, 2017
A memoir with recipes
Brutally honest in its emotional content, this frank recollection of a life lived with human people as parents, teachers, friends and enemies has clear,concise recipes for meals-as-memory from one embroiled in diaspora, finding, losing and re-finding identity. Bracing, honest and delicious.
Brutally honest in its emotional content, this frank recollection of a life lived with human people as parents, teachers, friends and enemies has clear,concise recipes for meals-as-memory from one embroiled in diaspora, finding, losing and re-finding identity. Bracing, honest and delicious.
April 22, 2020
2.5 stars. It was ok, reasonably interesting, but felt very disjointed and disorganized.
April 7, 2023
read
April 28, 2024
This is such a a beautiful story
March 8, 2016
Lesli Li's memoir of her paternal grandmother Nai-nai touched me deeply. Don't be confused into thinking this is a cook book; rather, it is a story of family wherein food is often used to enrich our understanding of everything. I have read a lot of books about China, both nonficton and fiction. I learned more about Chinese culture from Leslie Li's honest heartfelt story of her family than almost all the other books combined. She also shares many recipes with her readers. The prospect of preparing some of them terrified me but many seemed quite achievable and delicious. Li's imagery pulled me into her prose, tickling my senses with aromas, colors, landscapes and sweet and sour tastes as well as the sweetness and sourness of family interactions. She dug deeply into herself and touched my heart. She also challenged me with the sophistication of her language; I used the "look up" function on my Nook often and have happily added new words to my vocabulary. My favorite is "gibbous". The moon is described as gibbous when it is seen with more than half but not all of its circular form.
I really enjoyed this memoir and will want to revisit it again. I believe it is the type of book that reveals more of itself at each reading.
I really enjoyed this memoir and will want to revisit it again. I believe it is the type of book that reveals more of itself at each reading.
October 8, 2014
This is an autobiography of a Chinese-American woman who writes about her food memories as a way of understanding her heritage. In some ways it is like The Joy Luck Club, because the author as an American raised is struggling with her parents and grandparents, whose lives were wrapped up in historical events she doesn't remotely understand. In other ways her life is quite different from Amy Tan's fictional daughter: as a New Yorker whose family was also European and who lived in the suburbs, she was not surrounded by the Chinese community and has to research Chinese culture as an adult. It is also not a novel, so there are no neatly wrapped up endings to the relationships. While Li ends up in China appreciating the bok choy she loathed when her grandmother grew it in New York, her relationship with her father never seemed to reach a similar level of acceptance. I thought the stories of her mother's family and her relationship with her mother were more interesting, perhaps because I understood them better. The recipes were rather incidental.
November 5, 2015
A memoir by a Chinese American writer that focuses on family history and family relationships through the lens of traditional Chinese cookery. The relationships of the most significance are Ms. Li's with her father and with his mother, Nai-Nai. I loved reading about the food...it touched that part of me that loves movies like Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Like Water for Chocolate, and (my favorite) Tampopo that explore how food is way more than fuel to keep our bodies alive. Food is love, sex, power - and what we eat and how we eat it tells who we are. I felt a bit sad after reading this...there are no Hollywood happy endings where all misunderstandings are cleared up and everyone lives happily ever after. Even the people we love can hurt us, and we can hurt them. Loved ones get ill and die and we make bad choices for the best reasons in the world. But Leslie Li is a wonderful writer and I cared what happened to her and to her family. I would recommend this one.
September 15, 2013
Though I enjoyed the overall story, I am reminded once more of why I don't like auto-biographies in general. In many spots, the author came across as a whiny, self centered, brat. That said, I'll tell you what I LIKED about the book.
The descriptions of the daily life of her ancestors were rich, and colorful. I wanted to meet them, and the glimpses of them as they aged were poignant, sometimes repugnant.
The author also helped the reader to understand the behavior and culture of her particular family in a very concrete way. Though I had not experienced it, I felt I understood the motivation behind WHY the ritual meals were so important. I was able to draw parallels within my own family life.
The inclusion of the recipes was a stroke of genius. I will not be making any of them, due to dietary restrictions, but they added to the book, making it even more accessible.
The author through memories, stories and food, painted a history of her family that will be hard to forget.
The descriptions of the daily life of her ancestors were rich, and colorful. I wanted to meet them, and the glimpses of them as they aged were poignant, sometimes repugnant.
The author also helped the reader to understand the behavior and culture of her particular family in a very concrete way. Though I had not experienced it, I felt I understood the motivation behind WHY the ritual meals were so important. I was able to draw parallels within my own family life.
The inclusion of the recipes was a stroke of genius. I will not be making any of them, due to dietary restrictions, but they added to the book, making it even more accessible.
The author through memories, stories and food, painted a history of her family that will be hard to forget.
November 24, 2010
It is slow to start, but once I adapted to her roundabout communication style, I was able to relax and enjoy. I think this book was, in some ways, more for her to learn about herself and understand why she is who she is, than for us, the readers. It deals with a Chinese-American woman's experiences growing up in 1950's New Jersey and the tensions & cultural differences in her family between the different generations - mainly with her father. An interesting story and it reminded me to look more into the history of China, as her story bounces around the Communist era and other changes in China's government. I also enjoyed the food descriptions - especially of Nainai's cooking and her experiences taking lunches to school, as well as the competitions between the women.
June 4, 2016
Enjoyed reading this memoir. I got this book from the library as I was looking for food memoirs but this turned out to be much more. Liked the author's writing style, narrating from memory but with a touch of imagination and nice interpretation of events in a historical context. Reading this book piqued my interest in Chinese history and I spent some time on wikipedia learning about the various dynasties that ruled and the numerous wars they went through. I would suggest readers to have some basic understanding of the history to really enjoy the second half of the book when the author writes about her travels to China.
March 22, 2014
The book felt disjointed, so I tried to think of it as though someone were telling stories from their life; as we usually do not learn about someone straight through from childhood until adult experiences. Reading about other cultures is always interesting, esp. when someone's background warrants knowledge. Her memories are explained through food, which sounded wonderful. My grown boys, as well as their friends (after a hug) are usually greeted with "when did you last eat?" I only wish I were capable of preparing such memorable food.
February 4, 2016
This book was ok. I went into it thinking, Joy Luck Club, but it was more of an auto and family biography. The author jumps around a lot, which made me lose interest. Also, I was annoyed by the over-usage of what my dad would call "fifty cent words". Reviews from other authors said that the last third of the book was better and tied up loose ends. It just didn't keep my interest and, at about 60% on my Kindle, I just couldn't get up the enthusiasm to keep reading.
November 4, 2010
For a while, I found this memoir too piecemeal, as it jumped from character to character, and then to recipes. The last third of the book, however, ties together the threads into a strong and heart-breaking narrative about her family. What makes it work so well is the universal nature of the themes she explores. The ending gave me goosebumps.
March 2, 2017
An okay memoir - somewhat disjointed and meandering, some intellectual stuff. The stories set in China, particularly those about grandmother NaiNai are most interesting, involving history and the ever-fascinating and complex Chinese culture. Best recipe included: Soy Sauce Chicken
May 14, 2016
Not a smooth read, but worth the effort for an insight into certain Chinese traditions and for learning a little about Chinese history. I persevered with this book and went on to read up on the life of Songren Li. Have also ordered the first book written by this author about her grandfather.
Read
May 27, 2016A frank memoir with some extraordinary recipes. The author brings us into her memories - happy, sad, angry and frustrated - and adds authentic family recipes which somehow makes it more personalized. I'll be reading it again to catch some of the nuances I'm sure I missed on the first read-thru.
August 6, 2007
I like the first half of the book, but the second half felt disjointed and self-indulgent. Recipes, though. I love the recipes.
August 26, 2009
I loved Leslie Li's stories of growing up as a Chinese-American, especially her tales of her Old World grandmother.
September 8, 2009
Insight into contemporary Chinese heritage...biography. I really give it 3 1/2 stars.
Read
September 23, 2011Very prolific writer - her sentences are beautifully written. I plan to try out some of her recipes as well.
February 7, 2012
Wandering but Delightful non the less ! Very Simple Chinese recipes - was hoping for a little more .
February 12, 2013
This should have been a good book, but there were too many errors in what she wrote.
Read
August 3, 2013kind of boring, not as "foodie" as I wanted it to be
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews