Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You

A Memoir of Saying the Unsayable with Food

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Pub Date Apr 24 2025 | Archive Date Not set

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Description

‘If only my Cantonese parents weren’t so allergic to the word love…’

‘A wonderfully heartwarming memoir with lots of foodie insights.’ Rachel Khoo

‘A real and delightful surprise – and also very funny.’ Ella Risbridger

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What is the most unsayable thing you have ever wanted to say to your parents? For newly single food journalist Candice Chung, there’s been one thing on her mind lately: she has never told them, 'I love you.’ Simple. Reasonable. If only her estranged Cantonese parents weren't so allergic to the word ‘love’.

With a 13-year relationship coming to an end, Candice Chung finds herself losing not only her first love but also her most reliable restaurant review partner. And so when her parents offer to be her new plus-ones, she faces a dilemma: is it better to eat together in polite silence or to try to broach how, for the past decade, they've managed to drift so profoundly apart?

Through shared meals and culinary adventures, Candice and her parents begin to break their silence. Yet when a new relationship begins to bloom, it forces her to try to address what still remains unsaid. To do so, she must find a new vocabulary - a way to unscramble what her family has been trying to express all along. Not through words, but with food.

Set against the backdrop of this burgeoning new relationship, grasped-at date nights mid-pandemic and an uncertain future across seas, Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You is packed with heart, humour and those bright-hearted moments around a dinner table that bring us together.

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‘A world-spanning love story, a book of philosophy via the dinner table, a tender portrait of family trying to communicate: Candice Chung's gorgeous memoir is all of these things and more.’ Rebecca May Johnson, author of Small Fires

‘Tenderly shows how food steps up to provide the emotional support, comfort, and safety that humans need, when words cannot.’ Hetty Lui McKinnon

‘Will undo anyone whose love language is food.’ Tara Wigley, co-author of Ottolenghi SIMPLE


‘If only my Cantonese parents weren’t so allergic to the word love…’

‘A wonderfully heartwarming memoir with lots of foodie insights.’ Rachel Khoo

‘A real and delightful surprise – and also very...


Advance Praise

‘Chung's prose is as deliciously playful as her palate' Leah Hazard, author of Womb

‘Chung’s poetic prose blazes on the pages’ Jessie Tu, author of The Honeyeater

‘A wonderfully heart warming memoir with lots of foodie insights.’ Rachel Khoo

‘A world-spanning love story, a book of philosophy via the dinner table, a tender portrait of family trying to communicate ... a vital new literary voice’ Rebecca May Johnson, author of Small Fires

‘Hilarious, heartfelt and incredibly perceptive ... Candice Chung’s memoir stayed with me like the warmest of memories’ Lee Tran Lam, Should You Really Eat That? podcast

‘A touching, poignant love story ... at times heartbreaking, complicated and bittersweet, but also, uplifting and full of tenderness’ Huma Qureshi, author of Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love

‘A comforting hotpot of a book. Every page offers a new surprising morsel about connection and choice; always nourishing, always delightful, always tender’ Benjamin Law, author of The Family Law

‘A delicious and moving treatise about love and longing, and all the ways families express or hide these life-sustaining things’ Alice Pung OAM, author of Unpolished Gem and One Hundred Days

‘Chung's prose is as deliciously playful as her palate' Leah Hazard, author of Womb

‘Chung’s poetic prose blazes on the pages’ Jessie Tu, author of The Honeyeater

‘A wonderfully heart warming...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781783968855
PRICE £16.99 (GBP)
PAGES 256

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Featured Reviews

This was a bit of an odd one. The book is described as "... she’s determined to tackle what's left unsaid. To find a way to unscramble what her family has been trying to tell each other all along – not in Cantonese or English, but with food," and we are told she takes her parents to review restaurants with her for her job, which implies it's a family memoir, but actually it's more an emotional and relationship memoir around Chung herself. There is a fair bit about their move from Hong Kong to Australia and what it's like living in Australia as a Chinese woman, but a lot of it is working through the minutiae of her current relationship while also discussing her previous 13-year one which coincided with a period where she didn't see her parents - but as far as I could see, there is no explanation as to why that is, and she has made contact with them and introduces the new guy to them. I was aware of this emphasis from other reviews so it wasn't a surprise, and I did read through it quite happily.

Once more, I found myself sympathising with her mum, obviously experiencing culture shock and doing her best; to be fair, she is described positively and lovingly and the portrait of her isn't as harsh as some portrayals of Chinese mothers. And an interesting background being based in Australia.

Blog review published 17 April: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2025/04/17/two-east-asian-second-generation-immigrant-stories-tuyen-do-summer-rolls-and-candice-chung-chinese-parents-dont-say-they-love-you/

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