Introducing ten food-related folk legend with stamps from countries across Southeast Asia, this book invites immigrants from Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Indonesia to share the stories and culinary cultures of their homelands.
Even though stamps might be small, they don’t just deliver letters to faraway places, they also feature illustrations that can tell incredible, unique stories. This book uses stamps as a starting point to tell ten folk tales from different countries throughout Southeast Asia.
Each story in this book was written by an immigrant from the country where the legend originated, evoking original flavors from across the continent. The book spans a vast range of stories, from the Chung cakes made at the Hung Kings’ Festival in Vietnam, to the rice congee consumed during the Songkran Festival in Myanmar; from the Sarawak layer cakes and roti jala in Malaysia, to the fruit and vegetable carvings in Thailand, and the wealth of spices in Indonesia. While all the stories take food as a starting point, they also span a wide range of other topics, from the sources of myths and origins of festivals to amusing fables about animals!
The editor of this book, Chou Hui-Lin, has extensive stamp collecting experience of her own and the Stamps Tell You Stories series already consists of five titles, each of which takes on a different geographical theme. In addition to The Legends and Cuisines of Southeast Asia, the other titles include Taiwanese Children’s Stories, Popular American Legends, Slovakian Fairytales, and Japanese Folklore and Haiku, with the series still continuing to expand. In addition to the stories, the series also contains a wealth of stamp-related knowledge for readers to uncover and explore.