Can You Eat with One Chopstick?

When I first heard the book Eating with One Chopstick, I wondered what the book is all about. Will it teach a new way of eating Chinese food? Even then, I sensed that the book must be about something that’s not right or something that’s missing. My hunch was confirmed when I finally read the subtitle: Growing Up in a Single-Parent Home.

Media practitioner and author LJ Salceda says so in her Preface that eating with one chopstick is “arduous and unimaginable” and “the experience is incomplete”. That’s what single parenting and growing up in a single-parent home is like. One may think that the book has a sad implication, but reading it till the last page gives one a sense of hope.

The author shares her frustrations, struggles, heartaches, and challenges of growing up in a single-parent home and how she overcame them. She also provides practical information on issues affecting single parents and their children, like FAQ sections with a professional counselor and a lawyer, plus a briefing on R.A. 8972: Solo Parents’ Welfare Act and the Solo Parents’ ID which I didn’t know exist in this country.

People who’ve eaten with one chopstick would say it’s ridiculous, almost impossible, to eat satisfactorily with one chopstick. But Ms. Salceda tries to show her readers that it is possible with God’s help for someone from a single-parent home to have a better life than that of his or her family origin. Her life is an example and her bravery in sharing her life is admirable.

Eating with One Chopstick: Growing Up in a Single-Parent Home is published by CSM Publishing. Copies are available at CSM Bookstore, PCBS and National Bookstore.