Linh Khanh Trinh

My academic work focuses on culinary history. I believe that the history of food and eating can fill the gap that arises between political and cultural history for those whose story has been told by those who have exerted power over them. Culinary history is always the history of eating. Eating, and what we eat, is a play between desire and lack. It is for this reason that a cultural history of food and eating lends itself to the analysis of relationships characterized by an imbalance of power. The kitchen table is one of the clearest, least pretentious vantage points from which to tell the story of an occupier, and an occupied.

I am a Vietnamese culinary historian. What this means is not simple, because there is no such thing as Vietnamese cuisine. What we call Vietnamese cuisine is, in fact, a dizzyingly complicated, ultra-regional legacy left to us by a string of conquerors, prophets, dynasties, and despots. Our food is French, our food is Chinese, our food is the food of the Revolution, and our food is ours. In short, to be a Vietnamese culinary historian is to be a historian of Medieval China and its sphere, a scholar of colonial influence, of political violence, of Buddhist religious doctrine and Catholic missionary zeal.

Languages (other than English):

• Vietnamese
• Mandarin Chinese
• Nôm
• Japanese