For fans of Crying in H Mart and Taiwan Travelogue
A soulful blend of memoir and recipes, How to Cook Rice is a tender exploration of how food becomes the language of love and identity in a Taiwanese American immigrant family.
In How to Cook Rice: On the Care and Feeding of an Immigrant Family, Grace Hwang Lynch takes readers on a bittersweet journey as the firstborn daughter of Taiwanese immigrants learning to navigate the California suburbs, Asian American identity, and motherhood while exploring what love, food, and family mean in light of her generational roots. Through Grace’s stories and included recipes, these meals express what words cannot, prompting an examination of what love—and food—mean in an immigrant family.
Hardcover
Grace Hwang Lynch is a San Francisco Bay Area writer, specializing in Asian American food and culture. She has written numerous articles about Taiwanese food for outlets such as NPR, PRI, EatingWell, San Francisco Chronicle, The Mercury News, as well as essays that have been published by Tin House, Catapult, and Salon. She was the grand prize winner of the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize for her essay “Salty Like Tears,” which is excerpted from How to Cook Rice, and a nominee for an IACP Food Writing award in 2025.
A former broadcast journalist, Grace has appeared on NBC, CBC, and often hosts discussions for the Center for Asian American Media. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she took her first creative writing course with Maxine Hong Kingston. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), the Writers Grotto, and Asian American Women Artists Association.
