My thoughts on "Live-In Cook"

There were a couple of things I noticed about the story.

First, the author reveals both the ethnicity and the sexual orientation of the narrator's bosses gradually over the course of the story. It is not until the sixth page that we find out that the two Madams are in fact American and not French, and that they are lesbians. In contrast, we find out quickly that Binh is Vietnamese and gay. I would assume this is to elect sympathy from the readers towards the protagonist/narrator.  His description of his job searching and his stay in Bilignin during the summers emphasizes that fact.

These passages make him out to be a world-weary man who endures the constant prejudice of the people around him and the humdrum of his job because cooking is his passion. This is similar to why the protagonist of "Night Thoughts" stays with his wife; out of love. Binh cannot imagine not cooking even at his worst, stating 'A cook who has no desire to eat is a lost soul' (Turong, 8).

Second, Binh tries his best to keep to himself, and has developed ways to do this such as lying about his health to the Madames when he is too drunk to cook. He does this because he feels that Paris will never truly accept him. He states that he 'was a man whose voice was a harsh whisper in a city that favored a song' (Truong, 4). He is only at home in the kitchens and accepted among the other chefs and that is merely an unspoken kinship and acknowledgement that they are human and want to live a fulfilling life like everyone else. His day off on Sundays where he drinks the night away is a sample of that desire. He enjoys accepting the company and wine of the village farmers in Bilignin even though he denies it.

Finally, the author seems to emphasize that Mrs Toklas is the meaner of the two madams, and that her true love seems to not be her partner GertrudeStein, but her summer garden. He equates her toiling in the garden to a religious affair, and that 'along with her raptures, she is ashamed. Because she has begun to think of life without you, to plan for it in incriminating ways.' (Turong, 9) Toklas outright calls her garden her 'lovey" and says that she would not be the first to go because she could never leave her lovey alone in this world' (Turong, 9).

Overall, the true natures of the three characters seem to come out during the summer in Bilignin; Binh is a man weary and simply wanting to get away from the toil of the city, Mrs Toklas as mentioned before is a mean old woman who seeks refuge in her garden, and GertudeStein is a frivolous fool who teases Binh constantly calling him 'Tin Tin Binh' because of the amount of weight he loses over the season. This is equivalent to the wife of the protagonist in "Night Thoughts" being the gender-swapped dominant role in the relationship; the madams take the dominant role over Binh in this story. His homosexuality is used to emphasize this as well.

These were just the three things I noticed in the story. There were probably more details I missed but for now I can't recall.