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When I think back to our in-class writing exercise on describing the taste of salt, I am struck by how very, very much The Book of Salt served as a contradiction to Stein's literary approach. If Stein wanted to eliminate narrative by continually calling you back to the moment of experience, Truong is attempting quite the opposite. Whenreading, we live in the moments of Bao's life, but are not encouraged to associate them with our personal moments of encountering and experiencing his written experiences. Even he does not live in soley the moments he experiences. Every event he describes is reflected on and connected to his history up to the moment Stein and Toklas leave for America. There is one great exception to this rule: his sexual encounters. Perhaps he excludes describing them in the same detail because of his belief that there is no narrative in good sex?

I don't feel comfortable calling this book a feminist novel. I certainly don't think it's anti-feminist. I'm not especially sure what a feminist novel would be. Here I am exposing my Achilles heel: I wrote my major to focus on studying social systems, not the arts which makes my knowledge of feminist art not so scholarly. Perhaps I will have more to say about what it takes to make this novel feminist art after I return from the Whack exhibit in DC. Then again, perhaps the reason I hesitate to call the novel feminist is because I can think of several feminisms that were not concerned with some of the themes of the book. Themes such as the painful consequences of socioeconomic, ethnic, national and racial inequalities, imperialism and the protection of queer identities have not historically been at the forefront of feminist agendas. Because of this, I'm afraid of labeling the novel feminist precisely because it may box it into a system of theoretical tropes to which it does not subscribe. But certainly, its content and perspective resonates strongly with many third world, queer and third wave feminisms, to name a few.

Maybe I'm just being too academic here. I loved the novel because of its complexities. I hesitate to give it a label any less specific and complex than that which it is meant to represent. Am I just hiding behind my vocabulary? What would Bao say? I have so many amazing phrases written down from this novel that help me better think about aspects of the world. I suppose that I, like Bao, will integrate his/Truong's ideas into my own so that they will become reflections in my internal narrative. I don't think I can reflect on life as Gertrude Stein would have me to. I still find beauty in the reflected, not instaneous, complexities behind something as simple seeming as salt.

Flora