Celeste's Recipes

Recipes of People:

by Katerina Taetle

With a cup of love, a tablespoon of fear, a sprinkle of nostalgia, and a pinch of tragedy, Celeste Ng can cook up a realistic person.  

Some background: Everything I Never Told You, a novel by Celeste Ng, describes the Lee family struggling with the loss of a child.  Throughout the novel, Ng gives the perspectives of each member of the family and the parts of their past that make them who they are.  Ng’s uses recipes to develop plot and characters.  Ng uses the recipes that make up a person and how these people are the ingredients of a family.  Ng uses recipes to produce a heartwarming story of individuals and family in Everything I Never Told You.

The adults in the novel are the best examples of the recipes that make a person because they are older and have been part of families in the past.  In contrast, the children in the family have not had the same experiences because they have not lived as long or in different situations, however, the experiences from their own parents will have an effect on future relationships.

Here’s why and how Celeste Ng does it: Ng utilizes recipes in Everything I Never Told You is when justifying a person’s actions and explaining backstory.  She uses the recipes of what makes someone themself: their background being the ingredients and their actions and person as a whole being the product.  Marilyn Lee is a strong example of recipes; she is truly shaped by her dreams and her past.  Ng describes Marilyn looking around her childhood home after the death of her mother and how nothing has changed:

“She saw the same shabby furniture she’d grown up with, the same pale lilac wallpaper with a grain, like silk.  The china cabinet full of her mother’s dolls, whose unblinking eyes gave her the same cold tingle on the back of her neck.  On the mantel, the same photographs of her as a child,” (81).  Marilyn notices the objects that remind her of her mother.  

Her biggest fear is becoming her mother.  

When she sees her old home she realizes her fears have come true.  Marilyn’s memories and fears are enough to influence her to run away from her husband and children to become a doctor.  

Another character shaped by the ingredients of his past is James Lee who faced racism and financial struggles as a child and leads a life of trying to blend in so his own children do not have similar experiences.  He does not allow Marilyn to work because his own mother worked and he saw it affect his father.  

Ng writes of James“...he still remembers his mother rising early each morning and donning her uniform...he remembered how at night, his mother would massage oil into her calloused hands, trying to soften them, and his father would leave the room ashamed. ‘No’ he told Marilyn,” (79).  James does not let Marilyn work because of his memories despite its importance to Marilyn.  His parents impacted him just as he impacts his family and his memories of his mother affect his relationship with his wife.  

They shape him as a person.