Nina Mingya Powles

Tiny Moons is a collection of essays about food, belonging and longing. It's also a kitchen notebook, a travel journal, and a dream diary. This is a journey into childhood comfort foods, family feasts, Shanghai street food, and recreating memories through eating and cooking.

A Year of Eating in Shanghai

Tiny Moons

'It is June. I am tired of being brave.' . . . The poem is beautiful but it gets me down. It is June, I am in Shanghai and I am not tired. June in Shanghai is for cold bubble tea, for kissing, for three-yuan ice creams and misty rain mixing with sweat on skin . . . 

I wander back to class along Zhengsu Lu in the afternoon, my floral-print umbrella in one hand, an ice cream in the other. The air has that pre-lightning feel. It is June. 

Rae Chuck

azliana aziz

a delightful companion as i was savouring in tiny bits across the weeks.

as a book centered around food and eating, tiny moons definitely delivered and nina mingya powles was able to thread a year of eating in shanghai in a brief, but sweet collection of short essays. the sections followed different dishes throughout the passing of the seasons and it incorporated memory, as well as the distinct experience of eating something at a specific time that cannot bear any repetition. the essays are filled with those slivers of moments—fleeting in nature, mundane in some— but the fondness remains. and this fondness is the heart of the collection, carrying the essays through its vivid descriptions of the various dishes powles enjoyed during her stay in shanghai and other food highlights from her family's malaysian-chinese heritage.

despite its heart, i found it a bit of a challenge to read through the book because that was really all it had going on for it. the writing was good, but nothing worth noting and there wasn't any glaring problems with it to make me think it was bad. i guess, for me, i was waiting for a discussion or more elaboration on what was brought up in the essays. some seeds were already planted, such as powles mentioning the struggle of connecting with her asian heritage as someone who was born away from china and malaysia, while also being white-passing. she even mentioned how she had more access to her chinese heritage through her time spent in shanghai, rather than her roots in malaysian-chinese culture. i would have liked to see her touch more on that, especially since chinese diaspora subcultures within southeast asia are distinctly different from the mainland and have clearly affected her perception of cultural heritage and identity. and for the most part, i was asking, "so what?" with the essays. powles presents the foundation for discussion, but ends before anything can be investigated or focused on to expand what she knows through memory and in relation to what else she can say about it. the lack of follow through was a bit disappointing, since i felt that powles had the space to talk about more things beyond the recollection of her time spent eating in shanghai. she even included this part by the tail-end of the book: "what does it mean to taste something and be transported to so many places at once, all of them a piece of home? to be half-elsewhere all the time, half-here and not-here. there are two side of myself: one longing for the city, one at peace near the sea." i think she failed to answer her own inquiry and in doing so, was not able to provide the meat to her essays that would give readers something to chew on and have a more immersive experience with her work.

all in all, i found this to be heartwarming because it was written about food from a place of love and fondness. but i also wish it could have been more and took the essays beyond the dining table/kitchen/food kiosk/etc to give the essays substance that looked at the implications and other ideas shaped by the socio-cultural factors it was informed by.

gabi

as a book centered around food and eating, tiny moons definitely delivered and nina mingya powles was able to thread a year of eating in shanghai in a brief, but sweet collection of short essays. the sections followed different dishes throughout the passing of the seasons and it incorporated memory, as well as the distinct experience of eating something at a specific time that cannot bear any repetition. the essays are filled with those slivers of moments—fleeting in nature, mundane in some— but the fondness remains. and this fondness is the heart of the collection, carrying the essays through its vivid descriptions of the various dishes powles enjoyed during her stay in shanghai and other food highlights from her family's malaysian-chinese heritage.

despite its heart, i found it a bit of a challenge to read through the book because that was really all it had going on for it. the writing was good, but nothing worth noting and there wasn't any glaring problems with it to make me think it was bad. i guess, for me, i was waiting for a discussion or more elaboration on what was brought up in the essays. some seeds were already planted, such as powles mentioning the struggle of connecting with her asian heritage as someone who was born away from china and malaysia, while also being white-passing. she even mentioned how she had more access to her chinese heritage through her time spent in shanghai, rather than her roots in malaysian-chinese culture. i would have liked to see her touch more on that, especially since chinese diaspora subcultures within southeast asia are distinctly different from the mainland and have clearly affected her perception of cultural heritage and identity. and for the most part, i was asking, "so what?" with the essays. powles presents the foundation for discussion, but ends before anything can be investigated or focused on to expand what she knows through memory and in relation to what else she can say about it. the lack of follow through was a bit disappointing, since i felt that powles had the space to talk about more things beyond the recollection of her time spent eating in shanghai. she even included this part by the tail-end of the book: "what does it mean to taste something and be transported to so many places at once, all of them a piece of home? to be half-elsewhere all the time, half-here and not-here. there are two side of myself: one longing for the city, one at peace near the sea." i think she failed to answer her own inquiry and in doing so, was not able to provide the meat to her essays that would give readers something to chew on and have a more immersive experience with her work.

all in all, i found this to be heartwarming because it was written about food from a place of love and fondness. but i also wish it could have been more and took the essays beyond the dining table/kitchen/food kiosk/etc to give the essays substance that looked at the implications and other ideas shaped by the socio-cultural factors it was informed by.

Isabella

“What does it mean to taste something and be transported to so many places at once, all of them a piece of home? To be half-elsewhere all the time, half-here and not-here. There are two sides of myself: one longing for the city, one at peace near the sea.”
this lovely tiny little book is the intersection of 3 things i like the most: food, nostalgia, and identity. the way nina writes about food and how it ties into her culture and heritage... seamlessly weaving her personal anecdotes into her vivid descriptions of the recipes. idk how to explain bro i just rly like books like this and i think i'll find myself revisiting it soon :D

Sabrina D. 

This food memoir is everything I could have ever wanted. 

Kwan Ann Tan

this was so nostalgia heavy... i want to go home...

Victoria Simansjah

Love this book to bits. Totally relatable, heartwarming in every single way possible. I love her descriptions of all the food. I indulged the book within a day! Love!

Tiny Moons is a collection of essays about food and belonging. Nina Mingya Powles journeys between Wellington, Kota Kinabalu and Shanghai, tracing the constants in her life: eating and cooking, and the dishes that have come to define her. Through childhood snacks, family feasts, Shanghai street food and student dinners, she attempts to find a way back towards her Chinese-Malaysian heritage. "A pair of pink plastic chopsticks. A bowl full of instant noodles. The smell of chicken stock and jasmine tea. Steam starts to tickle my nose. Popo, my grandmother, watches me from her lacquered chair. This is one of my very early memories, where the shapes are blurred and colours flare out in waves. Pink and yellow plastic, deep blue Tibetan carpet. I don't know if all the parts are real, but I do know what happened next. When no one was looking, I flipped the bowl. The rim hit the table with a clatter, flinging out noodles and sending my chopsticks onto the floor. My mother shouted Aiyah! as I knew she would. But in the memory-dream, Popo doesn't move. She sits still, watching me. I only wanted to make a mess, but I think this might have been my first act of rebellion. No more chopsticks. No more noodles, at least not today."

Tiny Moons A Year of Eating in Shanghai

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