Book Review for The Dim Sum of All Things

If you are an Asian American or want to get a pretty good glimpse about what an Asian American encounters in regards to culture, then you should consider reading The Dim Sum of All Things by Kim Wong Keltner. What is great about this book is that you can connect to the cultural experiences that occur and there are also numerous hilarious moments. This book is not for just Asian Americans, but for anyone who is interested in embracing culture and its values.

This book revolves around Lindsey Owyang, a typical Chinese American woman who frequently encounters and tests her cultural heritage everywhere she goes. She is a secretary for the magazine Vegan Warrior and lives in an apartment in Chinatown with her grandmother. One of the most significant revelations she has in this story is her affection for Michael Cartier, one of her co-workers at Vegan Warrior. She constantly has the conflict that she cannot deepen her desirable relationship with Michael because she is held back by her cultural heritage. Lindsey knows that in Chinese culture, associating with a non-Asian person is highly disregarded because he/she does not embrace the values that Chinese people have. However, as she spends more time with her grandmother, family members, and participates in Chinese family traditions such as helping make moon cakes or cook large family banquets, Lindsey discovers bit by bit more about her Chinese background. After going back to China to visit her relatives and grandmother’s friends and relations, she realizes that she does not need to be ashamed of her culture, even though many would see her culture as weird and confusing.

Numerous themes are presented in Asian American culture in The Dim Sum of All Things. There is the Asian American stereotype where Lindsey mentions about Hoarders of All Things Asian, Caucasian men who pick on Asian girls because of their looks. Cultural identity and ethnicity are strongly represented in this book where Lindsey often relates herself to everything around her, especially when she mentions that she is the only non-white person who works at Vegan Warrior and is often used as a person to do all the chores and laborious work at the company and people portray Chinese culture incorrectly when they tell her. Lindsey’s relationship with Michael causes conflict in interracial dating where her family members do not appreciate interracial dating and she has a hard time accepting it because of her culture and her views of Hoarders of All Things Asian. As a young Chinese American woman, Lindsey goes through issues that all young women face such as love, gender discrimination, and family pressures. She is pressured by her family to find a good husband and Hoarders of All Things Asian try to take advantage of her as a woman. Also, she has numerous conflicts of love with Michael in her mind and also when she is with him.


I enjoyed reading this book. I can largely relate to numerous aspects of Chinese cultural heritage that are presented because it is personal with its appeal to young people since I am sort of like Lindsey in a way. I look at my Chinese cultural heritage and I compare and relate it to everything around me. Putting the setting in San Francisco, the city that I grew up in and still live in allows me to put myself in Lindsey’s shoes and get a sense of what she went through. Not only did this book give a very good representation of Chinese culture, but it also presented the story effectively and in a hilarious and easy way. The author makes us question the situations that Lindsey encounters and think about how she views her culture.

What I did not like about this book is the fact that it does not dive down deeper into the details. I personally think that Lindsey and Michael’s relationship could be described further because the way that their relationship was presented in the book was vague. Also, getting to know the family members better would help me understand how each person plays an important role in Lindsey’s life and how each brings in a unique aspect of Chinese culture. For example, Lindsey mentions Uncle Bill as an important part of the family and Uncle Bill is seen a couple of times throughout the book, including one scene where Lindsey visits Uncle Bill at his senior home and he grasps her hand tightly and talks to her. However, beyond that, there is no further explanation about Uncle Bill and the reader does not know Uncle Bill that well from Lindsey’s few descriptions about him. The ending could have been way much better. Instead of a family banquet, the ending should be more significant with a scene that incorporates all the important aspects and messages of the book. Or the ending could be a scene of a family banquet but with better aspects, such as giving a recollection of Lindsey’s thoughts and views about Asian American culture and putting a bit of everyone who is in the story to create a huge meaning at the end, which includes putting Grandpa and Uncle Bill in too.

This book gets a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.