"Food is life in Miranda Brown's delicious memoir. Traveling from China to the U.S. and back again, her journey shows how meals help us understand our past and shape our future. The tale is seasoned by more than dozen enticing recipes: I'm ready for some dumplings!"
—Andrew Coe, author of James Beard Award-winning A Square Meal

"A triumph of style and storytelling, Miranda Brown has fashioned an exciting memoir written in stylish, witty prose. Dumpling Therapy is a fascinating detective story as much as it is an ode to maternal love, and it made me very, very hungry."
—Carolyn Phillips, author of All Under Heaven and At the Chinese Table

"Miranda Brown’s Dumpling Therapy offers the best of the new food history, serious scholarship written in a lively and accessible fashion. While uncovering the secrets of her own family history, she revisits some of the founding fables of Chinese food history. If you think you know the origins of noodles or tofu or chop suey, you will likely be surprised."
—Jeffrey M. Pilcher, University of Toronto, author of Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity

"Like a dumpling itself, this book is much more than meets the eye—it’s a rich and nourishing meal of history and personal memoir in one. As a dumpling aficionado, I gained so much more appreciation for this perfect food after reading it."
—Cathy Erway, author of The Food of Taiwan

“This enchanting quest in search of what it means to be half Chinese and one hundred percent Californian by pursuing the origin of Chinese dumplings opens up new vistas in world food history. The bonus: doable recipes.”
—Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History

"A luminous and deeply personal book, Dumpling Therapy weaves together memory, identity, and history through the intimate axis of mother, daughter, and granddaughter. Spanning three generations, it illuminates a story far larger than any single family. Rooted in the longue durée of Chinese history and the Chinese American experience, the book refuses to confine food within fixed ethnic boundaries. Instead, it traces how cuisines—like people—migrate, transform, and carry the weight of the past. Grounded in serious historical scholarship and enriched with recipes that invite readers into the kitchen, this beautifully written work nourishes both mind and appetite. With her graceful prose, Miranda Brown reminds us that what we cook and eat is always entangled with where we come from."
—Michelle Kuo, author of Reading with Patrick, visiting associate professor, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

"Start with the vibrant, chaotic memories of a zany Chinese mother. Add a young professor with a new family, a library of ancient classics, and a boundless curiosity to bring five thousand years of culinary tradition to life—and to the table—and you get this gorgeous, profoundly moving kitchen memoir. Moving effortlessly from her mother’s youth in Hong Kong to her own life across California and Ann Arbor, Brown navigates the delicate space between tradition and modern reinvention. Armed with unique access to centuries of obscure Chinese culinary and medical texts—and the insatiable appetite of a seasoned diner—she untangles the deep cultural history of what we eat, always returning to the kitchen, and the ultimate question: What’s for dinner? Rich, funny, and deeply moving, this is a story of history, family, and the flavors that bind them together. (And yes, there will be recipes.)"
—Thomas DuBois, author of China in Seven Banquets: A Flavourful History and a professor of folklore at Beijing Normal University