Takeaway: Stories From A Childhood Behind The Counter by Angela Hui

 

Publisher: Trapeze

On Sale Date:  January 7, 2022

Pages: 352

This is a review of a book that I bought

Angela Hui's parents moved from Hong Kong to the UK in 1985, and started the Lucky Star Chinese takeaway in the small Valley town of Beddau, Wales in 1988. Angela and her two brothers grew up in the takeaway, as they lived above the shop. Her parents where always working hard in the kitchen of the takeaway. Angela describes in this book how she experienced growing up in a takeaway. It means always being in the takeaway after school and helping manning the counter since she was twelve years old. Manning the counter and the till and dealing with customers can be quite demanding, an in a Chinese takeaway, the family also has to deal with many racist incidents in a small town as Beddau. Her parents never really learned English very well, so Angela also has to support them with translating imporant letters. Angela's parents are very kind and loving, but the work in the takeaway means they rarely have any family quality time, only during the summer vacation to Hong Kong and on trips to the wholesale to shop for supplies and ingredients for the takeaway. Her dad is also not easy, as he has a serious gambling problem and lashes out verbally sometimes to his wife and children. 

Angela doesn't shy away to name the difficulties the family has faced, which makes the book really an honest memoir, and it is a book you can't put away once you started reading.  One of the most sad racist incidents was when boys break in into the garden where Angela's mom has her garden where she had grown melon's with care. The melons are stolen and smashed, and I truly put myself in her mom shoes to feel her sadness about this, it was so heartbreaking. There where fun moments too, and the book is filled in between chapters with the most delicous recipes from the takeaway, like spring rolls and prawn toast. Because of the hard work, the three Hui children get to study and fly out and started there own lifes, Angela describes when she had to leave the takeaway and move out to find her own path in life, and you can only have deep respect as a reader for the  hardworking  and honest Hui family, the parents retired after thirty years of running the shop, but this book truly is a dedication to the hard work of the families behind the Chinese takeaways in the UK. In the 1990's I once saw a British tv documentary (I think it was called Takeaway Lives or Children from the Chinese Takeaway) about the second generation of Chinese immigrants in the UK who run takeaways, and how they see their future. I still haven't found it online back yet, but this book truly reminded me of that documentary, as the people in it dealt with the same things I saw back in this book. I truly liked this book about and I highly recommend reading it!