52 pages • 1 hour read
Monique TruongThe Book of Salt
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Race and Sexuality
Through Binh and other characters, the novel explores issues related to identity—in particular, sexuality and race. Paris in the 1920s was relatively accepting of gay culture, especially compared to other parts of the world. The city was a hub for artistic and literary innovation, attracting a diverse and vibrant expatriate community, including many LGBTQ+ individuals. In the bohemian neighborhoods of Montmartre and Montparnasse, gay and lesbian artists, writers, and intellectuals found a more tolerant and open environment.
Cafés, salons, and clubs in Paris often served as meeting places where LGBTQ+ people could socialize more freely. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, whose fictionalized story features in the novel, were leading figures in this movement, as were others, such as the French writer Jean Cocteau and the American artist Djuna Barnes. All these figures contributed to the city’s queer culture. This acceptance, however, was limited to certain social circles and identities, as Binh experiences while in Paris. Though there was more freedom of expression at this time, there were still societal prejudices, particularly those that intersected with class and race.
Binh has a complicated relationship with his sexuality. He is comfortable enough to bed several men and rejects the idea of conversion therapy as nonsense out of hand. He even imagines a future with an idealized scholar-prince who could be a long-term romantic partner. This self-possession is buoyed in Stein and Toklas’s house, as he sees their marriage-like commitment to each other. On the other hand, Binh cannot escape his vicious and abusive inner dialogue with his father, an ongoing conversation that points to lingering feelings of shame and self-hatred. These negative feelings also come out in Binh’s self-harm behaviors—his cutting is a clear indication of depression, guilt, and internalized self-recrimination.
While Binh values his relationship with Lattimore—the first man who makes Binh feel seen and witnessed, like a real person—Lattimore’s ambiguous racial identity brings out Binh’s own negative feelings about being Vietnamese. Binh resents what he sees as the mixed-race Lattimore’s easy ability to pass as white; for Binh, who is unambiguously not white, Lattimore inhabits a world that Binh can never access. However, Binh’s perspective on Lattimore’s passing does not fully align with reality: Lattimore is always on the verge of being found out and is often questioned about his race. As he explains to Binh, Americans like Stein and Toklas are obsessed with racial categories, and the question of where exactly Lattimore belongs will always arise. Confirming this, Stein asks Binh whether Lattimore is Black, demonstrating that Binh’s envy of Lattimore’s racial status is misplaced. By the end of the novel, Binh still has not reconciled the contradictions he experiences as a gay, working-class Vietnamese man in Paris.
Language as a Bond and Barrier
Language is a major presence in this novel. Readers are keenly aware of Binh’s complex thoughts, his poetic voice, and insightful comments. However, his limited French and English skills prevent him from expressing himself to others in the lyrical way he does to the reader.
Binh’s romantic and sexual connections often take place through a language barrier. Because he partners with non-Vietnamese men, it is possible that his limited French and English attract them—both Bleriot and Lattimore to some degree fall into Binh’s “collector” category, or those who exoticize Binh because of his racial and cultural background. Chef Bleriot begins a relationship with Binh when Binh accompanies him to interpret at the market, and when he demonstrates his knowledge of French phrases, particularly those useful in a kitchen. Binh’s language skills, even though they are not perfect, make him useful and bridge some gaps—like those between himself and the Steins—that are otherwise mediated by class and race.
Binh and Lattimore often speak fluently to each other in their own native languages, not being fully understood, but letting the other pick up meaning from expression, intonation, and body language. Nevertheless, Binh is expected to learn Lattimore’s English; it would never occur to Lattimore to learn Vietnamese for Binh. Lattimore often interprets English words for Binh, including the title of Stein’s notebook about Binh, The Book of Salt. Binh and Lattimore speaking mutually unintelligible languages to each other foreshadows their eventual parting. They have two different understandings of their relationship and never really connect.
Without the opportunity to speak to others in his native language, Binh comforts himself with the idea that words are unnecessary for a true connection with another person. He decides to believe that the body, closely observed, yields more reliable information: “Words, I will grant you, are convenient, a handy shortcut to meaning. But too often, words limit and deny” (117). But, significantly, his most intense emotional connection happens with the man on the bridge—a native Vietnamese speaker who only enters Binh’s life for one day, but whose deep conversation makes such an incredible impression on him that Binh remains in Paris for years, hoping to once again see the man. Despite his adaptability, Binh never loses his desire to converse in Vietnamese and the feeling of home that it symbolizes.
The Power of Stories
Stories figure prominently in this novel. Binh says that a story is a gift best shared—that is what he is doing in narrating the novel for the reader.
The romantic fantasies of a scholar-prince that Binh’s mother shares with him when he is young stick in the back of his mind, resurfacing when he meets both the man on the bridge and Lattimore. Binh forever seeks that embodiment of the romantic ideal. The figure of the scholar-prince is a prominent archetype in Vietnamese and broader Asian mythology, symbolizing the ideal fusion of intellectual prowess and noble leadership. This figure often embodies the Confucian virtues of wisdom, moral integrity, and benevolence, reflecting the cultural emphasis on the importance of education and ethical governance.
In Vietnamese mythology, the scholar-prince is exemplified by figures such as Lê Văn Thịnh, a revered scholar-official during the Lý Dynasty, who rose to high rank through his intellectual abilities and contributions to the state. This archetype underscores the Vietnamese cultural value placed on scholarly achievement and the belief that intellectual merit should be a pathway to leadership. It is significant that the future Ho Chi Minh represents this archetype for Binh, as Ho Chi Minh has a complicated legacy as a political leader.
Bao tells many stories to Binh when they are shipmates, and while his stories differ wildly from Binh’s mother’s, Binh sees himself in Bao’s parable about the son of basket weavers who leaves home but can never recreate his home elsewhere. As a way of acknowledging Bao’s impact on his life, Binh rewrites the ending of his story with Bao, imagining Bao giving the red packet to Anh Minh, a more satisfying conclusion than what happens in real life. By rewriting Bao’s theft into an act of giving, Binh protects himself from feeling the grief engendered by losing the red bag, his only gift from his mother. Stories are a coping mechanism for Binh, and the novel does not paint this tendency as unhealthy or delusional: On the contrary, Binh is often subject to the stories others make up about him, so his rewriting of history is an act of agency and a means of survival.
Stories also feature in Binh’s relationship with Stein, who turns out to be one of the collector employers eager to wrest Binh’s biography from him to use as fodder for her writing. When Binh steals her notebook for Lattimore, he learns that the manuscript is about Binh himself. Stein has pseudo-colonized Binh’s life. Stealing the manuscript is another act of symbolic agency; even though Binh presumes Toklas has copies of the notebook, its contents never become public, and Stein does not profit from appropriating Binh’s story.
