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A Literary Feast: 9 Food Memoirs You’ll Want to Devour

Food can do so much more than nourish our bodies. It can bring people together, set them apart, and define personalities and cultures. It can say what words can’t. Food is a language all its own, and it’s personal — which is why we think culinary memoirs are a category worth exploring.

We (armchair) traveled and (vicariously) tasted food from around the world to find you the most recent, delicious book recs.

Truffle Hound by Rowan Jacobsen

Truffles are one of those things that elude straightforward description. Ask most people to explain what a truffle smells like and each one will give you a different answer, but most of them will start with, “It’s hard to describe.”

Rowan Jacobsen dives deep into the world of truffles, including all the different types found around the world, the fascinating people who “hunt” them, and the dogs trained to find them.

We were enraptured by these beautifully written chronicles that follow the mystery of truffles all over the world and include a number of descriptions that surpass olfactory, veering into the near spiritual. We give this food memoir a *chef’s kiss.*

At the Chinese Table by Carolyn Phillips

This memoir with recipes takes readers to Taiwan in the 1970s and ’80s. It’s rich in history, transportive storytelling, and plenty of illustrations by the author (always a bonus).

We enjoy that it’s told in the present tense, as if we’re back in time, right there with the author as she finds her way through language barriers, falls in love, and experiences food in China as few Americans ever do.

Phillips’ writing is vivid and sensorial, and her illustrations are absolutely charming — it’s as much travel memoir as food memoir.

A Blissful Feast by Teresa Lust

Perfect for fans of Francis Mayes, Lust’s culinary travel memoir is part personal journey (from chef to home cook), part cultural and natural history, and part utterly delicious food descriptions that’ll make your mouth water. She takes readers through the Italian Piedmont, the Maremma, and then Le March, chronicling not only the food but also the culinary guides she meets along the way.

At its heart, this book is about home cooking. And, as Lust says, “learning to cook like an Italian does not come from memorizing recipes, but from making a meal from what’s on hand and in season.” Still, we’re pretty stoked that this book contains more than 35 recipes for home cooks to try.

Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen

Though you might not have heard of most of these women, you’ve certainly experienced their influence on modern American cooking. This biography chronicles the lives of seven women who spent much of their lives immersed in running restaurants, writing cookbooks, and teaching classes on cuisines from their respective cultures of China, Mexico, France, Italy, India, Iran, and Jamaica.

Most of these women weren’t recognized for their contributions, but because of them we have the term “stir-fry,” know that Italian food is so much more than red sauce and that Indian food is not just “curry” (TBH, we’re still learning this in the United States), and much more. Sen’s writing beats with the collective heart of these passionate culinary creators.

Plenty by Hannah Howard

Part food memoir, part travel memoir, and part personal journey, this essay-collection-like book is a tribute to the women and community in the food industry. Howard’s writing is transportive, insightful, and starkly honest. She takes us through what it’s like to navigate an eating disorder in the food world (she now mentors women recovering from disordered eating), as well as other steep hills and valleys along her path.

Ultimately this book celebrates the love of food, storytelling, nourishing the soul, and the friendships that see us through it all.

Content note: This book discusses disordered eating, miscarriage, sexual violence, and patriarchal misogyny.

To Boldly Grow: Finding Joy, Adventure, and Dinner in Your Own Backyard by Tamar Haspel

If you’re not great at gardening, that’s OK — Haspel wasn’t either, nor did she know how to raise chickens, forage, fish, or hunt. But she did all those things and more after leaving NYC and moving to Cape Cod. She and her husband sought to learn for themselves how to eat and live in a way that was closer to the land — “first-hand food,” as they call it.

Haspel writes with insight, wit, and humor. And even if most of us will never pluck a turkey and will only get as far as growing tomatoes in a pot on our windowsill, we’ve become markedly more curious about how to source our food creatively and sustainably.

My Ackee Tree: A Chef’s Memoir of Finding Home in the Kitchen by Suzanne Barr with Suzanne Hancock

Barr takes us along for a journey through the meals, recipes, and conversations of her upbringing and her path in becoming a chef, wife, and mother. Through all the twists and turns — from the ackee tree of her childhood home to NYC, Toronto, and beyond — it’s full of soul, heart, humor, strength, and food inspired by Caribbean roots.

Her passion for cooking permeates each chapter, and her zest for life is contagious. This book contains a dozen recipes, but instead of being sprinkled throughout the chapters, as they are in most culinary memoirs, they’re in a section of their own at the back, which we appreciate for ease of use.

Mango and Peppercorns by Tung Nguyen and Kathy Manning

This book’s colorful cover draws us in, but it’s the heartwarming tale of unlikely friendship, food, and perseverance through difficult times that grabs our hearts.

Co-authors Tung Nguyen (who escaped the fall of Saigon in 1975) and Kathy Manning (who took in Nguyen and other Vietnamese refugees) chronicle how their little restaurant near Miami’s Little Havana came about.

Together they raised Tung’s daughter and turned the tiny eatery into the popular restaurant Hy Vong, with their signature mango-and-peppercorns sauce. There are 20 delish Vietnamese recipes sprinkled throughout.

Love & Saffron by Kim Fay

We couldn’t resist adding this novella to the list! It’s a fictional food memoir, if you will. Yes, it’s fiction, but it warmly captures the spirit of two people who are incredibly passionate about food while building the kind of friendship that sustains them through dark times — the kind of friendship we can all only hope for in our lifetimes.

Most of the book is told in the form of letters sent between the two friends, who were greatly inspired by real people in the author’s life. Grab a snack — it’ll make you hungry.

Naomi Farr is the books editor and a copy editor at Greatist. She loves focusing on all things books, beauty, wellness, and mental health. She’s also a YA fantasy writer and bookstagrammer. You can find her (and her cat)  @avioletlife .

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Course Syllabus

Honest to Goodness: Introduction to Writing the Food Memoir

No genre is more powerful at examining what nourishes and sustains us than the food memoir..

In this five-week intensive course, we will take inspiration from work in top-tier publications such as Bon Appétit , the New Yorker, and the New York Times . You will explore ways to incorporate food (both literally and symbolically) into your own writing, brainstorm food-inspired stories you want to tell, *spice* up your prose, and ultimately write and workshop a pair of personal essays in two distinct styles, using food as a vehicle for storytelling. The final week of the course will focus on best practices for submitting food memoir essays for publication.

How it works:

• discussions of assigned readings and other general writing topics with peers and the instructor
• written lectures and a selection of readings
• writing prompts and/or assignments
• the opportunity to submit one or more flash essays for instructor and/or peer review
• an optional video conference that is open to all students (and which will be available afterward as a recording for those who cannot participate)

Aside from the live conference, there is no need to be online at any particular time of day. To create a better classroom experience for all, you are expected to participate weekly in class discussions to receive instructor feedback.

Week 1: The Food Memoir: What is it?

We’ll begin with an overview of the food memoir genre—personal stories involving food preparation and/or consumption. In the first weeks of the course, we’ll focus on descriptive food writing. You will read a sampling of personal essays that describe everything from a father’s preparation process for his famous Persian rice, to a chef’s attempt to produce almond-flavored carrots. Follow this style and take an inventory of your “ingredients”— possible topics for your own descriptive personal essay.

Week 2: Description and the Food Memoir

Learn various strategies for adding rich descriptions to a food memoir essay. This week, you will do a close reading of essays that use a wide range of literary techniques to create a rich sensory experience on the page. You’ll experiment with various techniques and approaches in your own writing to make your story more vivid and inviting to readers. You will also submit a food memoir essay (1,000-1,500 words) for peer and instructor feedback

Week 3: An Appetite for Metaphor

Sometimes, memoirists use food not to make their readers’ mouths water, but to open a window on important social, moral, or cultural issues such as assimilation, homesickness, or the tension between dining in versus eating out. This week, we’ll focus on the concept of food as a representation of an idea. You will read a selection of food memoir essays that use this technique and brainstorm possible topics for your own symbolic food memoir essay.

WEEK 4: SYMBOLISM AND THE FOOD MEMOIR

This week, you will learn various strategies for composing a highly symbolic food memoir essay. You will do a close reading of essays that use figurative language such as simile and metaphor to explore important themes. You will also submit a new food memoir essay (1,000-1,500 words) for peer and instructor feedback.

Week 5: Revising and Publishing Food Memoirs

During our final week, we’ll explore ways to revise essays and learn where to submit food memoir essays for publication. You will also have the option to submit a third essay for peer-only critique.  

What Makes a Good Food Memoir?

Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA in nonfiction writing at Columbia, after leaving a life of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child health work. She is a writer, editor, and book reviewer who drinks way too much coffee. She is a new-ish mom, so the coffee comes in extra handy. Twitter:  @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

There is not much I remember of those first hazy, severely sleep-deprived first few weeks of parenthood, but I do remember the food. I remember eating lasagna one afternoon that a friend had made and brought over and just crying as I ate it because the act of feeding touched something primal in me. Eating the warmed-up lasagna fed more than just my belly. I remember the meals my grandmother would bring over and the takeout that she would insist on having me order extra of, “for the next few days.”

I don’t know what it is — maybe the last 18+ months have felt a bit like those exhausted, hypervigilant, worn out early days of parenthood — but lately I’ve been devouring (no pun intended) food writing. Perhaps, like comfort food on a rainy day, these help nourish me in some way and are a nice respite from everyday life. Articles, criticism, and yes, even memoirs. The Best American Food Writing 2021 shares bedside table space with Salt Sugar Fat ; Taco USA and Delancey have both recently been shelved after reading them. While I love all of it, it’s the memoirs that stick out the most for me. The author doesn’t have to be a world-class chef or even a chef at all — yet if the components of a good food memoir are there, I usually end up liking it. It’s always a bonus if there are recipes sprinkled throughout, too.

But what makes a good food memoir? It’s more than just great food writing.

Breaking Down the Components of a Food Memoir

Food can be wrapped up in emotions and memories, and a food memoir is no different. Food memoirs aren’t just about the food itself or just about how much one likes a certain food. They dig in to the emotional aspect of food, cooking, and eating. In Laurie Colwin’s memoir More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen , she’s not a foodie or a culinary master — she’s a writer who simply loves cooking. But what she does in the book is share personal stories, foibles, and tricks with the reader to show them why she loves it so much. The recipes are tied to emotional or interpersonal events, grounding them in real life. Even as someone who doesn’t love to cook, the book was a joy for me to read because of the emotional context in the writing. Lucy Knisley does this in her graphic memoir Relish: My Life in the Kitchen , as well. She connects her memories of her family with cooking and certain foods, and her own baking experiences that are linked to certain events and times in her life. Food connects us to places, events, and each other, and a good food memoir brings that to the page and evokes these feelings in us as we read it.

But as interesting (and tasty) as food and cooking are, there has to be something more to a food memoir. Recipes can’t make up the bulk of the text, and reading only about how much someone loves one food and doesn’t care for another gets old, fast. There has to be some conflict, or a bigger storyline that ties it all together. Michael Twitty’s The Cooking Gene not only explores the history of Southern food, but also his ancestry. He brings the reader into his personal life, sharing anecdotes and memories tied to the various intersections of his identity, while also placing them in the larger context of the history of the South, slavery, race, and culinary history. Food writer and restaurant critic Ruth Reichl details lots of publishing gossip and tales of Gourmet magazine — as well as her evolution into a leader — in her memoir Save Me the Plums . Yes, there’s lots of food writing, but it’s only part of the story.

There are also some basic craft and informative details that go into a good food memoir, too. Since I’m not a cook, I appreciate when an author goes into why certain things are done in the kitchen if they’re discussing it, or what they mean when they mention a technique. When a recipe, chef, place, or issue is put into a larger food or societal context, even if it’s as simple as referencing a trend that I may not be familiar with but I can google for more information, that also helps to give more information about the food writing, and I enjoy it that much more. Assuming the reader already knows all of the backstory or references can lose people in the reading.  

Food connects us, and I think the good food memoirs remind us of this. In Buttermilk Graffiti , chef Edward Lee travels around the country to explore the diversity of American food, and gets to know the people and the stories behind the food they serve. Through talking with them and eating their dishes, he connects with so many different people and then shares recipes that they’ve inspired. Jennifer 8. Lee also does this in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles , through exploring Chinese food and Chinese restaurants, and their place in American culture. Her book is also a really good example of a food memoir also having a larger storyline. The book isn’t just about her own life and memories tied to Chinese food, but also about explorations of various issues within the industry.

A good food memoir will draw you in with the food but keep you reading with good writing, a defined story arc, and some sort of connection with you. What is it that the author wants to share about this, and why should it matter? The answers to those questions can help guide the writing and be the reasons we pick it up in the first place. Balancing food writing with the personal story can be tricky, but when done well, it’s compelling.

What’s your favorite food memoir?

For more books about food, check out this post on contemporary YA reads for food lovers , and this post on sci-fi and fantasy cookbooks .

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7 Food Memoirs to Read Right Now

Plus, four to look forward to this spring

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Share All sharing options for: 7 Food Memoirs to Read Right Now

With the world changing every day during this novel coronavirus pandemic — and the industry we report on facing unprecedented challenges — I know I am turning to old comforts for solace, to fill the time, and to make sure I’m supporting the businesses that I love in whatever ways I can. For me, that means getting delivery and takeout from the local restaurants in my Brooklyn neighborhood, but it also means supporting the independent bookstores that mean so much to me and are such a part of my life even when we aren’t practicing social distancing.

If you, too, want to get lost in a book right now, consider some of these food- and restaurant-focused memoirs that I love here, and check out the spring releases that my colleague Monica Burton is most looking forward to. Please let us know if you’d like to see more book recommendations in the coming weeks — you can reach me on Twitter or Instagram at @soniachopra or over email at [email protected] . We hope you stay safe and healthy.

What to read now:

Arbitrary Stupid Goal tells the story of cook and writer Tamara Shopsin’s life growing up in and out of her parents’ corner store-turned-restaurant, Shopsin’s General Store, in the extremely quirky corner of Greenwich Village where the author grew up.

Burn the Place recounts Regan’s life in and out of restaurants — focusing on her family, her addiction, and her identity just as much as the food itself — tracing the path the chef took to opening her acclaimed Chicago restaurant, Elizabeth.

Climbing the Mango Trees is cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey’s beautifully written ode to her upbringing in India and the flavors, family traditions, and the diverse cultures that have shaped her knowledge of food.

Kitchen Confidential , Anthony Bourdain’s groundbreaking memoir about life inside restaurant kitchens, changed the way America thought about chefs and the industry when it was published in 2000; Bourdain later issued a new version with a foreword calling attention to problematic boys-club culture in restaurants, and the book is certainly worth a read with that in mind. Find 12 more of his books here .

Notes From a Young Black Chef chronicles chef Kwame Onwuachi’s upbringing in the Bronx, adolescent journey to Nigeria to live with his grandfather, his rocky rise through the ranks of the fine dining world, his appearance on Season 13 of Top Chef, and the opening and abrupt closure his ambitious Washington D.C. tasting menu restaurant, Shaw Bijou. Read an excerpt here .

Save Me the Plums focuses on food writer and editor Ruth Reichl’s days at the helm of now-shuttered but once-preeminent food magazine Gourmet, wherein the famed food writer and critic spills — in juicy detail — on what it was like to run a print magazine in the heyday of print magazines, and then see it through until the devastatingly bitter end. Read an excerpt here .

Yes, Chef follows chef Marcus Samuelsson’s journey from Ethiopia, where he was born, to Sweden, where he grew up, to the U.S., where he worked his way through restaurants and then opened his own, Red Rooster, which still exists today in New York’s Harlem neighborhood.

Looking ahead:

Wine Girl (March 24) details Victoria James’s path to becoming the youngest sommelier in the country. Now the beverage director at New York City restaurant Cote, James gives an unflinching depiction of misogyny and abuse in the fine-dining world.

An Onion in My Pocket (May 5) tells Deborah Madison’s life story, from growing up in San Francisco’s counterculture, to becoming a Buddhist priest, to leading a burgeoning vegetarian movement as chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco.

Dirt (May 5), the newest memoir from Heat author Bill Buford, recounts his quest to master French cooking. To do it, he uproots his family — his wife and twin boys — to Lyon; antics ensue.

Eat a Peach (May 19) the highly anticipated first memoir from Momofuku chef David Chang promises a frank exploration of the failures and successes that made Chang one of the most influential chefs of his generation, and the feelings of self-doubt that plague him either way.

Disclosure: Marcus Samuelsson is the host of No Passport Required , a show created by Eater and PBS. This does not impact coverage on Eater.

David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.

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A Life Told in Dishes: Five Essential Food Memoirs

Sylvie bigar recommends nora ephron, edward lee, diana abu-jaber, and more.

The stew would not let me go. Was it its plump, sexy beans or the bubbly, golden crust? Was it its grassy undertone that spoke of the forests, high up in the Montagne Noire ? Once I’d tasted cassoulet made by Eric Garcia in Carcassonne, I was bewitched. And to think that this had started with what I assumed would be a simple assignment for Food Arts magazine on the history of the dish! Instead, the trip changed my life and led to the writing of Cassoulet Confessions, Food, France, Family, and the Stew that Saved my Soul .

Food memoirs rarely center on just one moment. Often, it’s time in the kitchen with a beloved family member that kickstarts a lifelong passion, or the realization that one flavor can transport you back to another time. The truth is that there’s no better vehicle than food for nostalgia. In my case, it would take more than ten years to understand why I’d become obsessed with a clay pot full of pork, duck and beans.

It may not seem very appetizing to open a list of treasured food memoirs with the word ‘heartburn’ but Nora Ephron’s first novel, Heartburn , remains a personal favorite. But wait, novel or memoir? When the book came out in 1983, recounting the story of cookbook author Rachel Samstat’s discovery of her husband’s affair with her friend Thelma, most readers understood that this fictionalized tale was really a personal memoir. Ephron had recently uncovered her second husband Carl Bernstein’s affair with Margaret Jay, the daughter of a former British Prime Minister. And if this wasn’t enough to inspire an opera, the plot thickens since the author is slugging through the seventh month of her pregnancy.

Heartburn is a food memoir disguised as a novel, and its cast of characters include a vinaigrette and the key lime pie Rachel/Nora throws at her husband. Throughout, she delivers easy to follow recipes mixed in with her unique, punchy wit, “Even now,” she says, “I cannot believe Mark would want to risk losing my vinaigrette.”

Recipes on the page are just the start of the adventure for Dorothy Kalins, founding editor-in-chief of Metropolitan Home and Saveur Magazine, whose memoir, The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends is coming out in paperback. Led by her passion for “the larger story,” Kalins has been questioning, writing, and cooking with some of the most important chefs of our era. As she moves in her kitchen, they whisper in her ear.

There’s Marcella Hazan, the Italian food authority whose opinions are rooted in authenticity, “I teach cooking, I do not teach measuring,” she said before explaining to Kalins how to make risotto all’onda and why the shape of the rice matters as much as the shape of the pot. Author Colman Andrews, co-founder of Saveur and a man passionate about Catalan cuisine shows Kalins how to cook with salt cod. “Elemental and ancient,” she muses, “cooking with cod is redolent of history and danger.” In her kitchen, we learn about overfishing, Basque Spain, and lost species.

Then we sit at Zahav, Mike Solomonov’s celebrated Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia, as documentary filmmaker Roger Sherman prepares the filming of In Search of Israeli Cuisine . A whole world of spices and ingredients, one that will forever change Kalins’ flavor landscape, is revealed. Kalins ends up editing and producing several cookbooks with the chef.

It’s that same larger story that Edward Lee explores in Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine , a memoir named for the iconic Southern ingredient Lee grows to love in his Louisville restaurant and the art form that first defined his identity. For Lee, the story may start on the plate, but it’s just the opening of the trail. Who’s the person at the stove, what have they gone through, why have they landed in this particular corner of the universe?

In Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Lee enjoys Russian specialties, but for dinner he picks Kashkar, which may be the only Uyghur restaurant in America. Suddenly, he feels the world is larger, mysterious, and the lamb broth noodles rock every cultural reference the chef associated with lamb. In Seattle for a movie premiere, Lee finds himself in the Ballard neighborhood, once a hub of Scandinavian immigrants. At the Swedish Club, he asks a fellow diner what it means to be Scandinavian. “We’re not a soup, we’re a stew,” she answers, meaning each country is distinct but the identity is harmonious. Over locally made aquavit, the quintessential Scandinavian spirit, the chef reminisces about his late father and their difficult relationship.

The relationship with one’s father made me fall in love with Diana Abu-Jaber’s The Language of Baklava on page four, when she described her Jordanian father at the stove, holding her six year-old self, slung over his shoulder. “We are Arab at home,” she writes later, “and American in the streets.” The memoir opens while the family is living near Syracuse, NY but after her father disappears for a while, turns out he is back in Jordan where everybody joins him for a year.

Back in America and torn between pancakes and kebabs, Abu-Jaber juggles both identities as she grows into a defiant teenager. “I hate Arabic food,” she says to her Aunt Aya before they start baking baklava together. While her father holds on to the tastes of his youth, the author finally accepts that she can handle two identities. That’s exactly what makes her who she is and her writing so true.

Talking about true, have you heard of the original The Apprentice , Jacques Pépin’s charming memoir? Chances are you’ve seen him on television, with James Beard, Danny Kaye or Julia Child. First, we follow his childhood during World War II, his life as a boarder at a Jesuit lycée, and his efforts to find a saucisson in 1942 France as a first communion gift for his older brother!

With the opening of his mother’s restaurant, Pépin finds himself spending more and more time in the kitchen. At 13, he quits school, “More than anything in the world, I wanted to be a chef,” he says, but he starts, of course by becoming an apprentice. Everything changes when he boards the Ascania bound for New York City in 1959. The day after his arrival, he meets Pierre Franey, Executive Chef of the original Le Pavillon, who takes a quick look at his letters of recommendation. “Can you start tomorrow?” is all he says.

After my initial trip to Carcassonne and the encounter with Chef Eric Garcia, I wrote numerous articles inspired by the stew, its ingredients, and the region of Occitaine. I knew there was a book to write about this experience and that it was much more personal than reporting on learning to cook a dish. Still, it took me more than ten years to find the key to the familial and dramatic stories that hid under the cassoulet crust.

__________________________________

Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France, Family, and the Stew That Saved My Life by Sylvie Bigar is available from Hardie Grant Publishing.

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Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers

Go On a Quest: Write a Food Memoir

August 28, 2012 by diannejacob 65 Comments

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my free newsletter . Thanks for visiting!

But first, as always, you’ll have competition from chefs, who are still writing traditional memoir. Typically, these books bore me (except for Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential ). But then I read Blood, Bones & Butter , an adrenaline-fueled memoir of Gabriel Hamilton’s relentless ambition to make good food and find love. It won the Beard award for Best Writing & Literature earlier this year.

Like Bourdain, Hamilton has the writing chops to craft an exceptional story. Lest you think these two were both just chefs when penning their memoirs, The New Yorker published Bourdain’s first story , and he had already written a novel . Hamilton had an MFA in Fiction and had already written for several prestigious national magazines.

• American Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan returned to Singapore to learn her family’s dishes in A Tiger in the Kitchen .
• Kathleen Flinn started a cooking school in Kitchen Counter Cooking School .
• Eugenia Bone travelled around the US to learn about mushrooms in Mycopheli a .
• Jonathan Dixon survived cooking school in Beaten, Seared, and Sauced
• Robin Mather lost her job and her marriage, and retreated to a cabin in the woods to live frugally The Feast Nearby .

Most of these authors are journalists and successful freelancers, but you don’t have to be. Memoir is about your ability to tell a story well. As these examples show, it’s not about your whole life. That’s an autobiography, much harder to get published unless you’re famous. Autobiographies tend to be big messy stories that need lots of focusing and shaping, because they cover decades. (Although if you want to read a beautiful autobiography that made me cry, try Maman’s Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen .)

Quest-based memoirs like those I listed above, however, take only a year or so. The trick is to come up with an intriguing adventure and tell a concise tale with a plot. Memoirs are considered narrative non-fiction, so these books have tension and a story arc that propels readers forward. It would also help if you were transformed by the journey, write with introspection, research your subject well, and oh yes — you write with humor and self deprecation.

Too long of a list? I don’t think so. The problem is the “quest” part. If you’re still doing what you always do, at home in your kitchen or in front of your computer, a memoir is probably not what’s next for you. To go for it, come up with an idea that challenges you and takes you in a different direction.

You might also like:

• Memoir tips from Writer’s Digest — A compilation of posts about aspects of memoir writing
• How to Write a Memoir — About writing a family history, by William Zinsser . And if you don’t own his book On Writing Well , get it right now, please.
• How to Write Your Memoir — An essay in O magazine by a beautiful literary writer.

Now, a writing exercise: The ability to boil a book idea down to one sentence can’t be underestimated because it forces you to be concise and specific. If you have a memoir idea, try writing the concept in one sentence, in the comments here. Or maybe you read a great memoir lately. If so, please recommend it, also in one sentence. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Note: This post is adapted from my quarterly newsletter, which features dozens of links to info of interest to food writers. If you would like to receive it, please sign up for my newsletter by clicking on the link above.

Disclosure: This link contains posts to an affiliate program, from which I could earn several cents if you purchase a book.

Reader Interactions

August 28, 2012 at 5:24 pm

I could not put down Blood, Bones & Butter!

Thank you for clarifying some of what makes a good food memoir. I’m not sure if I have lived enough of a food life to merit writing one yet but it is in the back of my mind as a future project.

August 29, 2012 at 11:39 am

Me either. Hamilton is a wonderful, emotional storyteller.

There’s always first-person essay if you don’t get to a memoir. That’s the beauty of blogging.

August 28, 2012 at 6:15 pm

How bout; Two degenerate pizza chefs drive from Geneva Switzerland south through the Alps to Monaco and then up through Burgandy visiting many bakeries along the way and end winning the first-ever World Pizza Championship held in Paris France.

August 28, 2012 at 9:18 pm

Brave soul, John, to be first.

Is this a fantasy novel? Hah.

I like this idea. I would like to see more drama and suspense for a full-length book. Maybe someone has a hangover so severe they miss the first day of the contest, etc. But I don’t think you’re making this up!

August 29, 2012 at 5:37 am

I read a lot of food memoirs (have yet to read Gabrielle Hamilton’s – need to get on that!) and while it’s one of my favorite genres, the predictable story arc often bores me as well (it usually goes something like: person with passion for food works their way up the sweaty and exhausting ranks of restaurant chefdom, telling you along the way how most people would probably never make it. They do make it, thus proving to themselves that they can, then decide that ultimately it’s not the life for them and want to write instead). My Life in France by Julia Child is my favorite, and Grant Achatz’s Life, On the Line is up there (also because it’s about so much more than food). I also really enjoyed Season to Taste by Molly Birnbaum.

Aaaand that was way longer than one sentence 🙂 I’ve wondered if my current experience (living for three years in Israel) could turn into a food memoir at some point. We shall see. Great post as always, thanks!

August 29, 2012 at 10:24 am

Hah! I love your description of the chef memoir. So true. Many people have told me My Life in France is their favorite memoir, so you are in good company. I enjoyed Grant Achatz’s book too, even though it was weird how half of it was written by his business partner.

Living in Israel for 3 years could be a food memoir if there is a dramatic story to it. Something to ponder.

August 29, 2012 at 5:40 am

Travel through the cities and the villages of Turkey to find and learn differrent cheese recipes and techniques and portray the life of people from all walks of life.

I like that Ilke! Is this something you plan to do, or did it already happen? Was there any drama?

August 30, 2012 at 7:17 am

Thanks Dianne, I would like to do it at some point in my life, there are some traditional Turkish staples that show a wide variety among the regions. My goal is to introduce the Turkish cuisine to the people in the US with my blog but with a book like that I believe I can learn a lot.

August 29, 2012 at 6:19 am

A physician and newly wed young woman moves to the US following her husband, forbidden to work (visa issues) and bored with maternity, star volunteering at community gardens and writing a cooking blog, now get more than 140.000 pageviews a month and grows many pounds of sustainable veggies.

August 29, 2012 at 10:26 am

This sounds like a great beginning for an About page, Pilar! It has potential as a cookbook with recipes, more than a memoir, I think.

September 5, 2012 at 6:11 am

Thanks Dianne!. I admire how you make the time to answer to the readers.

September 5, 2012 at 10:07 am

I am always so pleased that readers take the time to write, so it’s the least I can do, Pilar.

August 29, 2012 at 6:34 am

One family take a journey of food discovery around China, meeting cave-dwelling farmers, itinerant beekeepers, yak herdsmen and wild mushroom collectors, while discovering that the adventure of a lifetime is really a journey into the soul, and that food is indeed the common language of humankind.

August 29, 2012 at 10:27 am

Wow! This is really different from most memoirs. It sounds fascinating, Fiona. Has the quest begun?

August 29, 2012 at 5:58 pm

Thanks Dianne for your always encouraging comments. Our travels began two months ago, seeing Inner Mongolia and following the Great Wall along much of its course. We just started westwards along the Silk Road to Kashgar. Another four months of wonderful food and exciting places to go!

August 29, 2012 at 7:43 am

How about this?

“Considering the countless days of sweaty armpits, frustration, and situations where humility is the only thing on the day’s menu – daily life when learning a new language and culture through immersion – having a garden was a godsend.”

“The concept of growing and preparing food as a way of perpetuating culture, and one’s sense of self, takes on a whole new meaning.”

Here’s the blog post I wrote this winter, from which these two sentences were excerpted: http://fruitrootleaf.blogspot.ca/2012/02/eat-here-live-herebelong-here.html .

Maybe a publishable memoir concept, maybe not. But a memory, yes, indeed.

August 29, 2012 at 8:28 am

I recommend Robin Hemley’s “A Field Guide for Immersion Writing” to help you with immersion writing in general and immersive quest memoirs in particular.

August 29, 2012 at 11:28 am

Excellent suggestion. I do not know about that book, or much about the idea of “immersion memoir.”

And I looked at your bio Ann. We have a past job in common, but mine was at Four Wheeler a little earlier than yours. Small world.

August 29, 2012 at 9:14 am

Such a helpful blog, Diane! Thank you! Everything I’ve read or heard from you has been so valuable. And I loved Hamilton’s book! I think saying things in one sentence is the hardest part of writing. But here’s a stab:

The tale of a marriage between a straight woman and a gay man, a history of a woman’s search for home, and a chronicle of the exhilarating powers of food, The Joys of Cooking-A Love Story draws us into an extraordinary, yet familiar, journey through the cuisines, cultural spirit, and politics of the 1940s to the 2000s complete with recipes.

I have a zillion versions of this sentence.

August 29, 2012 at 11:30 am

Thank you, Judy.

You had me at the very first part, up to the comma. I’m not sure how your sitaution is connected to food. Maybe that’s what you need to figure out.

August 29, 2012 at 11:47 am

This was helpful, Diane. My original one sentence included the relation to food. Hopefully, this one explains the connection better: THE JOYS OF COOKING: A LOVE STORY is the tale of a marriage between a straight woman and a gay man, a history of a woman’s emotional education, and an exploration of the ways in which cooking lays the groundwork not only for personal healing and intimate relation but for political community as well. Organized by decade and by cookbook, The Joys of Cooking draws us into an extraordinary, but also familiar, journey through the cuisines, cultural spirit, and the politics of the 1940s through the 2000s complete with recipes.

August 30, 2012 at 9:29 am

I’m intrigued. You might have 2 different books here, Judy. One is about your relationship to food, and the other is about your marriage. These are two very big subjects. It might seem less overwhelming if you could focus it in a little more.

August 30, 2012 at 10:29 am

Thank you for replying, Diane. This is very helpful. I may give my relation to my husband too much emphasis in my two sentences by mentioning it first. (Several readers felt it should come first. because it was unusual, so I moved it there, but I may distort the real story by doing so.)The memoir is primarily about my relation to food, how cooking was a way of recovering from childhood loss, of reinventing myself, of finding a sense of home in the world. My relation to my husband is a large part of this story since my cooking and our dining together and rating the dishes was our primary way of bonding to each other for twenty-five years. (Our relation went through many iterations–marriage, roommates, co members of a commune– but cooking and eating together and rating the food was a constant..) When he died of AIDS, I had to begin over. I found other kinds of home in cooking with my young daughter and cooking for a cross race community I helped create on my campus by hosting large buffets. Cooking was a way of bringing people together and instilling a sense of common cause.. So the memoir is mainly a story of how cooking led to personal healing and to relations that made me feel the world was home. Now, how to put that in one sentence.

August 29, 2012 at 9:39 am

I just remembered this and wanted to share: Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I really enjoyed reading it. It is about a year of commitment to eating local, growing your own and making due with what you have.

http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-Year-Food/dp/0060852569/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346258259&sr=8-1&keywords=animal+vegetable+miracle

August 29, 2012 at 11:31 am

Yes! And she spent a year doing it, organizing the book that way. Her book is a splendid example of a quest.

August 29, 2012 at 10:16 am

A young woman, a recovering drug fiend & ravenous alcoholic, rediscovers her creative self in the kitchen, trading dives, dance parties, and one night stands for a fresh life of farmer’s markets, writing recipes, and photography shared with her idiosyncratic partner, a poet and ex-heroin addict, in their bungalow situated in the hills above the meandering Tennessee River.

August 29, 2012 at 11:23 am

Well, that’s a story you don’t read every day. It sound like a good mix of wholesomeness and darkness. And drama. Lots of drama.

August 29, 2012 at 10:35 am

One of my current writing projects is a food memoir, and I’ve been writing it off and on for over two years. In fact, it took more than a year for me to figure out what I was really writing about.

Of course, I don’t have an MFA, or a published book. Although I have a small, but growing list of published credentials, completed several writing courses, attend writing webinars and conferences and have been building my platform. And I’m in the middle of writing a second draft mystery thriller. (It’s fiction)

I have two working titles for my memoir. “Fresh Fish and Scrambled Love: One Woman’s Unexpected Culinary Adventure,” and “Handcuffs, Hurricanes, Pepper Spray and Scrambled Eggs.”

Which do you like better?

It’s a memoir of a young, reckless chick with a dead-beat job chasing shoplifters, who was saved by learning to cook in a run-down diner on a tropical island.

I love Zinsser, his “Writing About Your Life,” and “Inventing The Truth,” are superb books, in addition, of course, to your recommendation. Also, Judith Barrington, “Writing The Memoir: From Truth to Art,” is another gem.

I love seeing the other one sentence memoir ideas. Thanks for posting this, Writing memoir is truly like going on a quest.

August 29, 2012 at 10:41 am

Oh this sounds good! I can relate. I love the young & reckless protagonist with a dead beat job in a run down diner on an island. I would totally read that.

August 29, 2012 at 12:14 pm

Beth, You’re too kind. Thanks. I’m gearing up to continue where I left off from January and my goal is to have a book proposal by next spring. Next month I’m going to KY Womens Writer Conference for a memoir seminar. Will you be there, by any chance? There are some great speakers, including Ruth Reichl, as keynote speaker. It’s in Lexington, KY. I’m assuming your blog is local milk? Let me know. Thanks again for the encouragement. You, too, have quite the story to tell.

August 29, 2012 at 8:47 pm

This is the first I’ve heard of it! Ruth Reichl for free…. if I have the time I will absolutely be there. Besides I would relish the opportunity to spend a little time in Lexington eating and taking photos! I don’t, at this juncture, even know what a book proposal would entail. Currently I’m simply working on finding my voice again after all those years of not being able to write. It’s hard to know who you are as a person after all of that, much less as a writer, which is hard to know no matter what your story is!

August 29, 2012 at 11:37 am

It takes a really long time to write memoir, because you need to see what you have and untangle and shape it, so I’m not surprised.

You have good credentials. For agents and editors, it’s more about the storytelling.

I like the second working title. It’s intriguing. Also I like your one-sentence description for the same reason.

Thanks for the recommendation about Judith Barrington’s book. It’s one I don’t have.

August 29, 2012 at 12:06 pm

Thanks Dianne, I wonder if the professional chefs, like Hamilton, write their own or collaborate with a ghost writer? Do you know? I really enjoyed Blood, Bones & Butter, btw.

August 30, 2012 at 9:30 am

I’m pretty sure Hamilton and Bourdain wrote their own books, but I suspect that the rest used ghostwriters.

August 29, 2012 at 11:41 am

This post is so fortuitous. I had a eureka moment and thought of what I want to write as a memoir 🙂 I’ve been on the look out for some stuff to help me with the process as honestly I do not know how to go about it (Though I have a working title, some chapters outlined and notes already)

My memoir would be about my love story with Dubai: hating, loving and, of course, eating in the City of Gold / the Las Vegas of the Middle East as a discriminated majority, an Asian. I noticed and read of stories from Westerners and native Middle Easterners, but none from Asians 🙁 I feel that our side of the story has to be revealed on paper to the rest of the world.

Would you read something like this? Any one?

August 29, 2012 at 12:29 pm

Yes, I would Didi. I would love to know about the culture and food world of Dubai.

August 30, 2012 at 9:08 pm

Thanks Maureen! Good to know that somehow that is an interest level in the idea 🙂

August 30, 2012 at 9:23 am

An interesting angle, Didi. It sounds like you have figured out the bones of it. The hard part is to write it! I like the Asian angle to the story. Definitely there’s not enough writing on that topic.

August 30, 2012 at 9:12 pm

Thanks Dianne! Yup its a story that somehow never made it out into the open. And agree that an idea only remains to be idea unless one works on it. I know the only way to start is to write! Outlined some chapters already based on interesting stories I’ve experienced and am finishing a chapter this weekend 😉

August 29, 2012 at 12:02 pm

I, too, consider this post fortuitous because I am right in the middle of writing a memoir. I have a B.A. in Writing and Literature but I only recently fulfilled my dream of going to culinary school. The thing is, I enrolled at the age of 42, which meant that my perpective, and perhaps even my motives, were different than most culinary students, who are in their 20s. I wasn’t the only “older” student in the class, but I wanted to tell of my experience.

This is all easier than done because tying classroon experience with emotions, psychology, physical wellness, and other issues is complicated. Add to that other writing projects and it can be an overwhelming task. But I am determined to finish it . I’m aiming for 6 months.

So many career changers who are older enter culinary school now. I think a lot of people could relate to your experience.

August 29, 2012 at 12:46 pm

Those of you who want to write a memoir reflecting your experiences with food in a foreign country–go for it! Books on iInternational cuisine and culture are HOT these days. I think you would definitely have a winner. 🙂

August 30, 2012 at 4:21 pm

Thanks Roberta. They are particularly hot as cookbooks, the food interpreted for others like us.

August 30, 2012 at 12:51 am

I agree that a book length food memoir has great potential to be a tedious read, but as a short form, food memoirs are fabulous. My blog http://kosherhomecooking.com is a collection of mini food memoirs but if you want to read the best of the best (sorry, that isn’t me) try Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking and it’s hysterical too.

August 30, 2012 at 9:32 am

Laurie Colwin’s books are among my favorites. They don’t neatly fit into cookbooks and they aren’t quite memoir, but her voice is very strong. People treasure her intimacy, humor, kindness, and expertise.

August 30, 2012 at 8:54 am

What an interesting way to showcase a family’s history – a food memoir ! I’ve had some story lines in mind, they are so true to life, and will mirror both the positive and the negative anecdotes of our family. If I write some of these true to life stories, it will surely get the ire of my relatives. But thanks for giving me something to think about !

August 30, 2012 at 9:35 am

Elizabeth, yes, I know what you mean. Memoirs tend to be positive and leave most of the negative parts out, especially those about food. Even when Reichl wrote about her dotty mother in Tender to the Bone, it was endearing.

September 1, 2012 at 9:59 pm

You’ve got me thinking about that Chocolate memoir i started writing and then shelved…hmmm! Where to pick up the pieces?…

September 2, 2012 at 9:29 am

Take it down from the shelf. That’s a start, anyway.

September 5, 2012 at 6:41 pm

Alone in Italy again…1972 asleep in a damp Napoli pensione and dear Roberto died…now it is 2012…who did blow up the USO? Reflections from an aging, all-American girl with an Alsatian palate!

September 5, 2012 at 8:18 pm

A little confusing, but also intriguing.

September 7, 2012 at 12:02 pm

Dianne, you know I have been pondering – and scratching bits and pieces of – a memoir, but the more I think about it and discuss it and jot down notes, the more I realize that it isn’t about food at all. Well, food saved me many times, but what started as a food memoir has grown into something bigger and more important. I think writing down ideas and chapters helps each of us clarify what we are trying to say and really what needs to be said. I have read many memoirs and food memoirs, some excellent, some lousy and others simply okay. But each one I read helps me clarify my own a bit more. Thanks for a great post!

September 8, 2012 at 6:32 pm

No food at all? Hmm. Well, that’s fine of course. But you can tell a good story through food too. You said “something bigger and more important.” That’s intriguing, but also, the bigger it gets, the harder it is to wrap your arms around what it’s about and the more overwhelming it gets to write. Just sayin.

September 24, 2012 at 12:44 am

Nice post – and advice – Dianne. I recently started my blog and most of my posts, to my surprise, have been about food, or rather how closely food is connected to my Italian-Australian upbringing. The more posts I write, the more I remember anecdotes about things that seemed trivial at the time, but now seem to reflect my late father’s personality and my aged mother’s peccadilloes. I’ve also been involved with film festivals for many years, so some film segues have found their way in too.

September 24, 2012 at 1:08 am

Sounds like a fascinating story to me! Especially the film segues.

September 24, 2012 at 1:14 am

Thanks Dianne. Not sure I know who my audience is yet, but working on it! I notice that you’ll be presenting at a food bloggers’ conference in Adelaide in November. Sounds great, but it’s fully subscribed. Are you coming to Sydney?

October 3, 2012 at 10:24 pm

Tossing aside a successful, albeit staid, career as an English teacher, I convinced my principal to allow me to teach cooking to 240 at-risk, urban middle school students sans funding, a kitchen, or running water; we are in year three and expanding.

October 4, 2012 at 9:14 am

That sounds like a good story, especially if you incorporate those of the at-risk youths.

October 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Hi there, I am a student currently in Tasmania and I am lost in an attempt to write a memoir. I want it to be about my life journey. I have been travelling to many countries since I was a child and picking up different food memories and leaving people behind. Coming from a traditional Nepalese family , where food is everything yet I was not allowed to pursue a career in it due to class differences in Nepal. Now that I have travelled the world I don’t have the thinking of a traditional nepalese girl but how do i convey that in a memoir??

October 7, 2014 at 1:29 pm

If I understand you correctly, you still need to connect with your younger self and remember who she was. You are looking back on your old self in a memoir, with compassion and insight. Does that make sense?

June 3, 2019 at 12:58 pm

It is two sentences and not one…

After a career in the military, a middle-aged man continues to be of service to others and creates a second life through food. As he sorts his way through drinking, depression, and meeting a train head-on, he decides to leave the restaurant he built, delve into self-care, and regain his motivation in a life beyond the stove.

June 4, 2019 at 9:24 am

Good start. I got it down to 1 sentence:

A middle-aged man sorts his way through drinking and depression to leave the restaurant he built, regaining a life beyond the stove.

June 4, 2019 at 2:18 pm

Thank you for your time and your feedback. The idea of writing the concept in a single sentence is what I needed to to get clarity and focus. Thank you.

June 5, 2019 at 9:57 am

You’re welcome. It’s easier when someone else does it!

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Angles / 2017

selected essays from introductory writing subjects at MIT

Home » 21W.012: Food for Thought–Essay 1

21W.012: Food for Thought–Essay 1

• Will you write relatively “pure” narrative or will you choose to use your personal experience to reflect more generally and explicitly on some issues that it raises?
• How will the piece be organized? Will you link together a series of memories in more summary form or will you focus on a few scenes and try to convey them by recreating actions and dialogue?
• How much talking to the reader will you do, offering commentary on what happens from your current point of view?
• What will you learn of significance from your experience, and how will this emerge?

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The Epicurious Staff's 9 Favorite Food Memoirs

By Becky Hughes

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

A great food memoir touches on the real reasons we love food—it's not just a means for survival, but it's how we experience joy, pain, love, and humor. These are the books that make our staff excited to keep cooking, reading, and feeling.

Never Eat Your Heart Out by Judith Moore

According to digital director David Tamarkin, this is "perhaps one of the only food memoirs published that isn't precious. In fact, I'd call this book anti-precious. It's about the way we remember not just our happy memories through food, but also our awkward memories, and our painful memories. And Moore is such a good writer that even when the food doesn't sound particularly delicious (a tiki-party scene comes to mind), you want to keep reading."

BUY IT: Never Eat Your Heart Out , $29.95 on Amazon

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler

The 2012 debut of writer (and former Chez Panisse cook) Tamar Adler is part memoir and part, as senior editor Anya Hoffman describes, "homage to the controversial fridge dweller known as leftovers." Anya says, "Written in quiet but precise prose, the book sets out an economical and inspired approach to daily cooking that advocates for using the tail end or discards of a past meal to start the next one (sautéing broccoli stems in olive oil to spread on toast or turning a heel of bread into garlicky breadcrumbs to sprinkle on pasta). Adler’s premise is simple but powerful and it helped convince a generation of cooks that really—no, really—there’s something to eat in your kitchen. With Adler’s help, you can find it."

BUY IT: An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace , $11.99 on Amazon

The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher

The Gastronomical Me , a moving story of the American food writer's travel experiences, is about food. Specifically French food. But it's not a story told through rose-colored glasses—it's also about wartime tensions, sexual taboo, and hunger, both physically and emotionally. Fisher poses the question, "why write about food?"—and answers it in this beautifully executed memoir.

BUY IT: The Gastronomical Me , $13.20 on Amazon

Give a Girl a Knife: A Memoir by Amy Thielen

"There is such a beautiful juxtaposition of cooking in this memoir: a peek behind the veil of first-rate dining in New York and the struggle of getting dinner on the table at an off-the-grid farmhouse in the Midwest," says associate director of audience development Erika Owen. "I love this story because it's funny, at times, but then showcases the incredibly real experience of following someone you love across the country while trying to keep your own ambitions in check."

BUY IT: Give a Girl a Knife: A Memoir , $16.06 on Amazon

My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl

E-commerce editor Elaheh Nozari loves this one—which is somewhere between a cookbook and a memoir. "Ruth Reichl is my idol (mainly because she has great hair) and because this book, which is about the recipes she made after Gourmet closed down, came out right when I got laid off from an editorial job (albeit a very bottom-of-the-ladder job). The recipes really show how cooking can be such a source of comfort."

BUY IT: My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life , $19.89 on Amazon

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

Molly Wizenberg, blogger at Orangette and another one of our 100 Greatest Home Cooks , shares how she discovered her calling in the kitchen. Associate editor Emily Johnson highly recommends the read—there are tons of recipes nestled in here, too, like a Julia Child–inspired tarte tatin, a dish she fell in love with while living in Paris.

BUY IT: A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table , $11.99 on Amazon

I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting by Rebecca Harrington

Commerce editorial assistant Zoe Sessums digs this one, in which the author attempts to mimic the diets of 14 different celebrities, both dead and alive. "Harrington goes through the wild, surprising, and often disgusting eating habits of famous people. From Beyonce's Sasha Salad (chicken salad with jalapeños in it) to Jackie O's baked potato with Beluga caviar, it's a very entertaining read."

"I'm also looking forward to reading I Hear She's a Real Bitch by Toronto restaurateur Jen Agg," Zoe says. "Aside from the fact that Agg has some serious swagger, I'm fascinated to learn more about her journey starting a restaurant and becoming a voice in the feminist revolution in the culinary world."

BUY IT: I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting , $11.99 on Amazon

BUY IT: I Hear She's a Real Bitch , $14.36 on Amazon

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

Emily said it best: "Of course I like this book, which is a cliché...but for a reason." Reichl's 1998 memoir is a coming of age story, in which she recounts her most powerful food memories, from childhood on, that shaped her love for the kitchen. "Food could be a way of making sense of the world," Reichl writes. "If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were."

_ BUY IT: Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table , $14.99 on Amazon

Blood, Bones and Butter:The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

This is one of the more entertaining memoirs I've ever come across—Hamilton, who opened New York institution Prune, details her sometimes idyllic, often dark, and entirely strange trajectory into the world of cooking. Hamilton deals with her sexuality, a fraught marriage, and the way female chefs are positioned in the industry—all with lots of wit and lots of food.

BUY IT: Blood, Bones and Butter : , $11.99 on Amazon , $11.99 on Amazon

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Top 10 culinary memoirs

Going beyond lists of ingredients, these books recall the various ways in which food nourishes our most intimate lives

W hen I was writing about the dinners I had with my elderly friend Edward, I made a decision early on not to include any recipes. Edward, an accomplished cook, rarely wrote down any instructions for, say, his oysters Rockefeller or chicken paillard . While the food we ate was certainly important, the book was not meant to be a cookbook, but instead a memoir about the nature of friendship.

In this pursuit, I was inspired by a rich literature of culinary writing in which food is a central motif, but is held together by the story of its preparation and the fellowship that comes from sharing a meal. So many writers – from MFK Fisher, who wrote lyrically about the pleasures of dining alone, to New York chef Gabrielle Hamilton, who documented her hardscrabble upbringing through family meals – use food as a catalyst for memories and loving nostalgia.

While I’m still a big fan of a good recipe book – anything by Jamie Oliver, Yotam Ottolenghi and Julia Child – it’s the stories in beautifully rendered memoirs that stay with me longer than any recipe. It’s Nigel Slater using burnt toast as a metaphor for his mother’s love, and Anne Fadiman getting drunk as a teenager when she tries to please her vintage-wine-obsessed father. Below, are what I consider some of the best culinary memoirs.

1. The Wine Lover’s Daughter: A Memoir by Anne Fadiman Fadiman’s most recent book about her father, the American author and radio personality Clifton Fadiman, is a deftly written memoir – a coming-of-age story written around her father’s oenophilia. He was “a lousy driver and a two-finger typist”, she writes, “but he could open a wine bottle as deftly as any swain ever undressed his lover”.

2. The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was ahead of her time. After spending “two shaking and making years in my life” with her new husband in Dijon, she returned to California in the early 1940s where she became a serious food writer. The Gastronomical Me recounts some of her very poetic encounters with food. Here was a woman who loved nothing more than dining alone in a restaurant “as if I were a guest of myself, to be treated with infinite courtesy.”

3. Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton Hamilton runs Prune, a jewel of a restaurant in New York’s East Village. She is also a gifted writer who takes you on a journey from her difficult adolescence in rural Pennsylvania to New York’s aptly named neighbourhood Hell’s Kitchen, where she moves after high school before opening her restaurant.

4. Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin The New Yorker writer and Gourmet magazine columnist’s memoir is about the joys of cooking at home. From her tiny Greenwich Village kitchen, she writes about meals shared with friends and family. “I love to eat out, but even more, I love to eat in,” she says. I fell for the ordinary extraordinariness of her stories, the reliance on available resources and implements to create something wonderful. This is what I tried so hard to capture in my own book.

5. Consider the Oyster by MFK Fisher WH Auden called Fisher “America’s greatest writer”, which is my excuse for choosing a second book by her. It’s easy to see why the poet so admired her, in this slim 1941 volume – an ode to the gastronome’s prize treat. “An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life,” she begins. Fisher tells you everything you ever wanted to know about this bivalve mollusc and writes brilliantly about such unfamiliar ingredients as Herbsaint .

6. My Life in France by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’homme A great account of the Childs’ life in Paris after the second world war. Working with her grandnephew Alex Prud’homme, the great chef reminisces about meeting her husband Paul in what was still Ceylon while both were working for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. When Paul took a job in Paris, Julia immersed herself in French cooking. Her description of eating sole meunière for the first time at a restaurant in Rouen is mouth-watering: “It arrived whole: a large, flat Dover sole that was perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley on top.”

7. Cooking for Mr Latte: A Food Lover’s Courtship With Recipes by Amanda Hesser The “Mr Latte” of the title is the author’s boyfriend, a writer for the highbrow New Yorker who has rather lowbrow tastes in food. Although affable and intelligent, he ends each exquisite meal they share with the fine-dining faux pas of a latte. First told in instalments for the New York Times where Hesser worked as a food writer, this is as much a love letter to New York and food as it is to the man Hesser ends up marrying.

8. More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin Since the subject here concerns appetite, I’m going to recommend a second helping of Colwin. I feel a real kinship to her because I share her obsession with what people eat at home. Written the year Colwin died aged just 50, this is a treatise on the importance of the family dinner – no matter who you consider to be family. “We know that without food we would die,” she writes. “Without fellowship life is not worth living.”

9. Talking With My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater by Gail Simmons Simmons is a presenter/judge on Bravo’s Top Chef , but she’s also a fellow Canadian who found herself struggling to make it in a tough industry in New York. In this memoir, she writes about growing up in Toronto with a mother who wrote food columns and conducted cooking classes in their suburban home. Simmons’s trial-by-fire in some of the toughest high-end restaurant kitchens in New York City makes for a great read.

10. Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger by Nigel Slater Slater tells the story of his childhood through a catalogue of British sweets – fairy drops and Bluebird milk chocolate toffees – and the culinary failures of his mother. Burnt toast was her specialty. “My mother burns the toast as surely as the sun rises each morning,” writes Slater, who nevertheless longs for blackened bread after she dies and his father marries a woman who is the perfect housewife but very much the evil stepmother.

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Meet MFK Fisher, Who Changed the Way We Write About Food

The prolific author turned essays about eating into thoughts about love and life.

Today, the landscape of food writing is deeply personal. Delve into your newspaper’s food section, or pick up any culinary magazine or book, and you will find that the author’s point of view is present in the story being told. Think Julie Powell documenting her ferocious efforts to cook every classic Julia Child recipe in Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously . Or Anthony Bourdain disclosing sordid restaurant secrets in Kitchen Confidential .

But that’s not how people always wrote about food. It wasn’t until Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, also known as MFK Fisher, began publishing books and essays in the 1930s that this style of writing – less traditional cookbook, more food memoir – became popular. And for many decades, she dominated the nascent field, churning out classics like The Gastronomical Me and How to Cook a Wolf , and publishing hundreds of stories for The New Yorker . When she died in 1992, the New York Times noted in her obituary that she often “used food as a cultural metaphor,” creating a genre in the process. 

During her 60-year career, Fisher also translated French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin’s renowned 1825 book, The Physiology of Taste , into English (giving us English speakers the famed quote, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are”). That quote might best describe how Fisher approached food writing.  

While other authors limited their writing to ingredient lists or cooking instructions, Fisher led readers on a journey, sharing her musings on life, love and good food. As she bounced back and forth between Europe and the United States, she wrote about the food encountered in these places – the meals consumed with friends, the dishes enjoyed in moments of joy or in times of deep sorrow. The result is a lifetime of work that illuminates the food culture of each decade of the 20th century and tells stories of the lives lived during World Wars, the Great Depression, the 1960s, and all the way up to the final years of the millennium.  

Meet Julia Child, the Not So French, French Chef

Fisher was born in Michigan in 1908 but grew up in California, where she met future first husband, Alfred. They moved to Dijon, France, in the early 1930s so Alfred could study at the university there, and Fisher found herself a lonely young housewife abroad in Europe. Like Julia Child , Fisher dove head first into French cooking – learning about local produce, recipes and the art of eating well. (In fact, an anthology of her work is titled The Art of Eating .) 

The Gastronomical Me recounts these years, but not in any Eat, Pray, Love kind of way. Fisher’s prose has a darkness to it. She was not afraid to break the mold established by conventional female food writers like Isabella Beeton, who put forth into the world neat and tidy portraits of domestic bliss, or delicious meals. Fisher wrote: 

“We ate terrines of pâté ten years old under their tight crusts of mildewed fat. We addled our palates with snipes hung so long they fell from their hooks, to be roasted then on cushions of toast softened with the paste of their rotted innards and fine brandy.”

Fisher’s words reveal the unglamorous gore of animal eating, the ugliness of food and perhaps the emotional state of its eaters. In How to Cook a Wolf , as World War II raged in Europe, descriptions of pâté and fine brandy had given way to a sort of survival guide. Fisher advised on war time cooking,

“Use as many fresh things as you can, always, and then trust to luck and your blackout cupboard and what you have decided, inside yourself, about the dignity of man.”

Her marriage to Alfred disintegrated in 1937, and she quickly fell in love with a friend of theirs, Dillwyn Parrish. They married a year later and made their home in California’s San Jacinto Mountains. But Parrish’s battle with Buerger’s disease, which left him in chronic pain, proved too much to bear. In 1941, Parrish shot himself. In Fisher’s third book, Consider the Oyster , published a short time after, she describes the consumption of the mollusk, “Its chilly, delicate grey body slips into a stewpan or under a broiler or alive down a red throat, and it is done.” The finality of the oyster’s fate echoes feelings she might have had about her husband’s life and how it all might end. 

Fisher’s long and illustrious career would continue right up until her death in 1992. She was hired in 1966 by Time-Life Magazine to write her first “official” cookbook, The Cooking of Provincial France , which brought her back to France for research. In the final decades of her life she churned out a new work every few years, demonstrating an extraordinary capacity as a writer, but also a lover of food. 

The next time you read an article or essay about food – or even a food memoir – remember as you come to know the author, their life, and their reflections on whatever culinary culture they may be writing about, that this story sits in front of you, in large part, because of MFK Fisher. ◼

Victoria Flexer, author of “ A History of the World in Ten Dinners ,” received her master’s degree in historical studies from The New School. She specializes in sharing history through food, art and culture.

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20 tasty and tantalizing food memoirs

• BY Anne Bogel
• IN Book Lists , Books & Reading
• 119 Comments | Comment

Readers, with no events to attend or sports practices keeping us busy, family dinners have become a major thing in our house. I’m not talking Downton Abbey-style gowns and dinner jackets here, but our nightly meal has certainly become much more of an event than it was during pre-quarantine times.

As someone who loves to cook and spend time in the kitchen, I’ve appreciated the nudge to slow down while preparing and enjoying our meals. My cookbooks are getting lots of love lately as we revisit favorite recipes and find new ones to try.

I’m also finding fresh inspiration in one of my favorite literary genres: food memoir. Food is full of stories, from the family history behind a handed-down dish to juicy kitchen drama at a high-end restaurant to a culture’s roots and traditions.

Even if you don’t love to cook, perhaps you love to eat, and most certainly you enjoy a great story, well-told. Today’s list contains food memoirs from chefs, home-cooks, and food critics.

Perhaps one of these titles will inspire you to cook up a feast—or savor some delicious takeout. Much like your favorite meal, these food memoirs are sure to entertain, inspire, and comfort.

Some links (including all Amazon links) are affiliate links. More details here .

Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow

The Sweet Life In Paris: Delicious Adventures In The World’s Most Perplexing City

From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India

My Life in France

Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

Kitchen Confidential

Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen

Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat

Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris

The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart

My Berlin Kitchen

The Language of Baklava: A Memoir

Yes, Chef: A Memoir

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir

A Homemade Life

Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life Of A Critic In Disguise

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

What favorite food memoirs would you add to this list?

119 comments

A lot of these books sound really interesting! I didn’t even know food memoirs were a thing. I’m not a big fan of cooking but I do love trying new foods.

The Cooking Gene by Michael W Twitty is beautifully written. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Dinner: A Love Story would be one of my picks. It’s probably shelved with cookbooks, but the essays before the recipes makes the whole thing read more like a memoir. The author had two kids in less than two years, and I read it for the first time when my two-under-two set were still really little, and I completely related to everything she said about how two babies totally upends your coooking and eating routines. I loved it, and have made her pizza crust recipe nearly every Saturday night for 6 or 7 years.

Ah! My favourite niche non-fiction genre: the food memoir! There are so many on here that I’ve read and enjoyed – plus a few new discoveries. A couple that I’ve loved are ‘Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone’ edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, ‘The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School’ by Kathleen Flinn, ‘A Half Baked Idea: How grief, love and cake took me from the courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu’ by Olivia Potts, ‘Adventures of a Terribly Greedy Girl: A memoir of food, family, film and fashion’ by Kay Plunkett-Hogge. There are so many more – both to read and discover. A great list!

One of my favorite genres. My TBR pile for my summer vacation just got a little bigger.

Julia and Julie, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, I Loved I Lost I Made Spaghetti, The Pleasure of Cooking for One, My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story.

While not a memoir, but fiction, my favorite Ruth Reichl book is “Delicious”. I reread this often and I love it anew each time!

I loved this novel, too!

Yes! It was my selection for our book club, ages ago.

Keeping the Feast by Paula Butterini

I also really enjoyed The Sharper your Knife the Less You Cry and Pancakes in Paris!

Love, love, love The Sharper the Knife!

I just read The Sharper Your Knife on your recommendation and LOVED it! Thanks so much!

Oooh, one my favorite genres – thanks for some new titles to add to my TBR! A few others: Delancey by Molly Wizenberg; Love in a Tuscan Kitchen by Sheryl Ness; Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser; We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time by José Andrés; Love, Loss and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi; The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacqués Pepin. I could keep going but I’ll stop! Wait, one more, My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes that Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl. Looking forward to seeing more recommendations!

I loved “Cooking for Mr. Latte” by Amanda Hesser. She also wrote one about her year working as a chef at a French chateau called “The Cook and the Gardener”, which is a memoir/cookbook mashup. Other cookbooks that are part memoirs that I love are “How to Celebrate Everything” and “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea”.

Also loved Amanda Hesser’s Cook and Gardener – reread it with the seasons and cook from it often!

I love Ruth Reichl books! A brand new food memoir is Almost Home by Fanny Singer about growing up with her mother, a chef and restaurant owner in Berkeley.

Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist!

Bread and Wine is my recommendation as well! I love that book.

Yes, I LOVE this one!

Yes! Bread and Wine is my favorite too! I have two quotes from this book painted on canvas hanging in my dining room. And the bacon wrapped dates recipe is a go to appetizer.

I love this one, too!

The Feast Nearby is my favorite. It is the book that enticed me to read food memoirs. Now, I’m hooked! I’ve read most of the above, but can’t wait to try a few I haven’t.

Give a Girl A Knife: A memoir by Amy Thielen

Thank you for this list. I love this genre , have read most , discovered new ones and more again from the comment section. Am currently reading Dirt by Bill Burford.

Yay for food memoirs! Love, love some on this list, and the others are being added to my to-read pile post-haste!

David Lebovitz’s Drinking French is my new favorite. It shares his experience of the French café culture that he loves, combining stories of his trips to various spirit makers to learn their histories with delicious cocktail and other café drink recipes. In addition, during recent weeks, David has been sharing his time on Instagram demonstrating the recipes and interviewing the spirit makers live. A real bonus!

I adore David Lebovitz and didn’t know he had a new one! Thanks for sharing it here.

I suggest More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin; Voracious by Cara Nicoletti; Take Big Bites by Linda Ellerbee. I have read most of the ones you list, but not all and I am also a big fan of food memoirs.

I love Shauna Niequist’s Bread and Wine! Her style of writing and recipes are incredible. This book makes me want to sit at her table and just soak up her wisdom with a plate of Blueberry crisp and a glass of wine.

This is one of my favorite genres! I actually did a roundup post on it a few years ago, which I’ll link to below if anyone is interested.

Some recent favorites or new releases that I want to read soon include Always Home (written by the daughter of Alice Waters), Let Them Eat Pancakes, Everything Is Under Control. I also enjoyed Shauna Niequist’s Bread and Wine, though that has a definite religious slant to it.

So excited to add some of these titles to my list! I had heard of or already read many of them, but I’m really excited about the others!

https://www.toloveandtolearn.com/2018/03/07/14-books-for-the-foodie/

I love this genre and had read many of the books, but found some I haven’t. One to add from my list is Iliana Regan’s Burn the Place. The more modern version of Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter.

There are a lot of good fiction books set around food. How about that list next?

Additional books that could be added to the list are: Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes – This book includes recipes. Let Them Eat Cake and Bon Appetit by Sandra Byrd – fun afternoon reads The Baker’s Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan – novel set during WWII

I read another book where a NY journalist went to live in Paris and she made note and map of the patisseries around where she lived. She included the addresses and her favorite pastries at each. I can’t remember the title and I can’t find the book on my bookshelf. I must have loaned it out some time ago.

I read this book, too. It’s called “Paris My Sweet” by Amy Thomas. So mouth-watering!

I love this genre! One that hasn’t been mentioned yet is Kitchen Yarns by Ann Good. Another favorite is Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flynn.

I’ve heard great things about the MFK Fischer books. I need to look into them. Does anyone here enjoy them?

They are delightful.

I love Peter Mayle’s books – besides A Year in Provence, He’s written a memoir of traveling to food festivals throughout France and a book on bread baking. For mostly fiction, I love A Literary Feast, Which contains short fiction and memoirs.

I read Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums – and it was phenomenal!!

Love by the Glass by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher is a must for wine lovers. My favorites listed above are Yes, Chef; Kitchen Confidential; and My Paris Life. I want to read more by Anthony Gourds in, and I have Ruth Reichl in my Kindle sue. Books, wine, and food–my favorites!

Love by the Glass by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher is a must for wine lovers. My favorites listed above are Yes, Chef; Kitchen Confidential; and The Sweet Life in Paris. I want to read more by Anthony Gourds in, and I have Ruth Reichl in my Kindle sue. Books, wine, and food–my favorites!

I’m not so interested in food and recipes as I am in good, enjoyable writing and a sense of place (read: France). Which of these 20 would you say fits the bill? I have enjoyed My Life in France, Julie and Julia, The Sweet Life in Paris, and savored every well-written word of Animal, Vegetable and Miracle, but did not relish Garlic and Sapphires or The Sharper Your Knife, they both fell flat for me. One set of books I would add to this list is from the delicious Elizabeth Bard, with her Lunch in Paris and Picnic in Provence. I went out and bought them after reading from the library.

Yes! I second Lunch in Paris and Picnic in Provence. Love this list!

I bought both of the Elizabeth Bard books, too. I’m not normally a rereader, but her books are exceptions.

Mastering the Art of French Eating would be a great one for you! Ann Mah is a great writer and I really enjoyed how she took me all over France in that book. Try it, you’ll like it!

I LOVED the Tembe Locke book! So beautifully written as both a memoir and a recipe book.

Me too! I just read it last week, and found it very thoughtful and hopeful, despite how sad the story is.

One of my favorite food memoirs is Anya von Bremzen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking.

Yes! It’s one of the very best! It’s subtitle: A Memoir of Food and Longing — says it all.

Omigosh this list is amazing. I read while simultaneously searched my local library online catalogue to place holds on all the titles that jumped out to me. Looks like it is going to be a tasty summer!

Bread and Wine by Shauna Neiquest. One of my all time favorite reads. It made me want to gather friends around our table and cook delicious meals as we share life together. Recipes included!

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese

Seconding this! This book is the antidote to the folks who read Animal Vegetable Miracle and get grand plans that they too shall grow all their own food and butcher their own meat. I was literally laughing out loud at the turkey and goat bits in Jennifer’s book.

The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater is a wonderful memoir of food and his life within a year. His food is wonderful but his writing is exquisite, volume one is my favourite. Also The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater is his celebration of Christmas starting some months early in preparation for the event. Beautiful reading, this is my bedtime reading every winter.

Oh yes Nigel Slater! Also re read Christmas Chronicles every year – beautiful book physically too, with gorgeous photos. His memoir Toast – a story of one boy’s hunger is wonderful too – was made into a lovely movie a few years ago. Another British wonder is Nigella Lawson – her books are mainly recipes but with lovely contextual asides and warm witty family anecdotes. I have all her books and she’s been beside me as I learned to cook over 20 years.

I’m so glad you suggested Nigel Slater’s writings; I love his Kitchen Chronicles and have read the first two multiple times! His Seville orange marmalade recipe IS THE BEST!

Thanks for a great list! I love cooking and just wrote a blog post featuring some of these, including Save Me the Plums & The Sweet Life in Paris! Now, the question is, which of these on your list to read first?

I would add Michael Ruhlman. Soul of a Chef got me started in this genre. Enjoyed a couple of his other books, too and the rest are on my TBR. Thanks for the list! Adding a few that I haven’t read to my TBR!

I love Ruth Reichl’s books. I am sad that I never had a chance to read Gourmet Magazine when she was still the editor (and it still existed). I read two at the start of the pandemic and they were both great reads. The way that she writes has my mouth watering (and I am NOT an adventurous eater in real life), she just describes food SO well. I’m excited to check out more books in this genre!

I, too, am a big Ruth Reichl fan. Her Tender At the Bone is a classic! The first chapter really sucks you in.

Possibly my favorite genre! I’ve read about half the books on this list and Kitchen Confidential was one of my favorites because I actually listened to it on audiobook, which was narrated by Anthony Bourdain. Another favorite that isn’t on the list is Spiced: A Pastry Chef’s True Stories of Trials by Fire, After-Hours Exploits, and What Really Goes on in the Kitchen by Dalia Jurgensen. That title is a huge mouthful!

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks because I can often do other things while I listen. My favorite thing is listening to books about food while I cook! Recently listened to Ruth Reichl’s Delicious! and that was such a fun one.

Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach. Love it!

What a fabulous list! I’ve read four of these listed and just added several to my WTR list. Memoirs are one of my favorite genres, and in the subcategory of food- a double win.

Two older books, but still well worth reading: Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes (turned into the 2003 movie starring Diane Lane), and a year in Provence, by Peter Mayle.

I love food memoirs & have a number of them on this list, and have had a couple others on my TBR list. Now I have more to add! Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is one of my absolute favorite books of all time. I also enjoy the writings of MK Fisher, especially when she writes about France.

GIVE A GIRL A KNIFE by Amy Thielen is super fascinating. It talks about her and her husband’s early years working in restaurants in NYC and then traveling around North America to eventually moving back to Northern Minnesota. She used to have a Food Network show called Heartland Table.

I have Thielen’s memoir on my shelves waiting to be read. I actually got it signed at an event she had in NE Mpls. Her cookbook The New Midwestern Table is a favorite of mine!

I am trying to figure out how to read all of these food memoirs without going broke.

Love this list! I would add Kitchen Yarns by Ann Hood – excellent risotto recipe! Lucy Knisley’s Relish is a great memoir graphic novel style

Library? My library has most of them.

What a great list! One of my favorites was Bill Buford’s first book, Heat.

How about Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen and Provence, 1970 by Luke Barr.

I would add On Rue Tatin by Susan Hermann Loomis. It is memoir of a young American couple who moved to Normandy France, bought and restored an old monastery to create a home and a cooking school. It is the story of learning French ways in the kitchen and in life, of rearing young children in a different culture, of making friends and finding one’s way. Recipes intersperse this lovely story.

I love On Rue Tatin – time for me to read it again

Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist is one of my favorite books. Remembering meals throughout her life that have made an impact on her. Really thought provoking!

I can’t express how much I loved this book!

Thank you for this list! I see some old favorites along with several new to me titles that look interesting.

All of Ruth Reichl’s books are fantastic. “My Kitchen Year” is filled with gorgeous pictures and recipes.

In the vein of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is “Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food” by Megan Kimble. Very interesting about how our food is processed. Spoiler alert: in one chapter, Megan decides to process her own meat, from the live animal to her table.

I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and the title of the second book you mention sounded fascinating…until I saw your alert. I may be too squeamish to read it, but good to know of it, thanks!

If you want something substantially less graphic, try Make the Bread Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese! She decided to try and make everything by scratch, then calculate whether the storebought version or homemade version was cheaper, tasted better, and whether from scratch was worth the effort. She has a really funny bit about it being a rite of passage for food writers nowadays to stare down their future chicken dinner and take it’s own life to meditate on the responsibility of being a meat eater…and she just kinda butchers a chicken and thinks “yep, nothing profound here, I am eating a bird like I ate thousands of birds before.” Really funny! And the recipes in it are great!

This is one of my favorite genres. I’ve read several of these, but I see quite a few I need to get to. Not exactly food memoir, but I think Peter Mayle’s books about living in Provence are excellent. His descriptions of food and wine there always makes me hungry.

What a great subject – especially when we are all cooking more than before. My favorites are: Laurie Colwin’s “Home in the Kitchen”, “The Pleasures of Cooking for One” by Judith Jones with recipes that can always be expanded and “Potluck at Midnight Farm” by Tamara Weiss – full of fun and recipes.

Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard is my absolute favourite food memoir. And it has a sequel… Picnic in Provence.

Have any of you read The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon? I bought it upon several friends’ recommendations, but I haven’t read it yet.

My Nepenthe by Romney Steele – she put out an updated anniversary edition this last year.

Love this list! Food memoirs are one of my favorite things to read. They’re older books, but I recommend anything by M.F.K. Fisher–everything she writes is about eating and cooking and all our hungers. The Gastronomical Me charts her development as an eater and as a cook, and is so good. The Art of Eating collects a number of books of hers in one volume. Every time I read her I want to share good food with people I love.

This is from a review of The Gastronomical Me: “Because The Gastronomical Me is autobiographical, following Mrs. Fisher from childhood to widowhood in different countries, we are able to see its food not only as a matter of personal taste, but as a perpetual emotional and social force within a life. Here are meals as seductions, educations, diplomacies, communions. Unique among the classics of gastronomic writing, with its glamorous but not glamorized settings, its wartime drama and its powerful love story, The Gastronomical Me is a book about adult loss, survival, and love.” ―Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books

The preface to The Gastronomical Me is one of the prettiest pieces of writing I have ever read. (Well, the whole small book is one of the prettiest pieces of writing I’ve ever read.) So good.

I’ve only read a few M.F.K. Fisher essays and I’ve been meaning to read one of her longer works for years! Thanks for sharing this rec.

I loved A Day of Honey by Annia Ciezadlo. She’s an American woman who married a Lebanese man and moved to the Middle East with him. They live in Iraq and travel around other parts of the Middle East, and she describes the culture around food so vividly you can practically smell it. The tone suits 2020 well too, because she’s describing all this uncertainty with the war, but all that high emotion and drama is juxtaposed with the the everyday activity of needing to eat.

Oh, Anne, you did it again…expanded my TBR yet again! This is definitely one of my favorite genres! I’ve read several of these (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one of my favorite books of all time and one of my very rare rereads), but now, thanks to this, I have my work cut out for me. Thanks, Anne!!

Any and all Ruth Reichl and Laurie Colwin books. Molly o’Neill’s Mostly True, Lucy Knisley’s graphic book French Milk, Born Round by Frank Bruni are all wonderful.

The Measure of My Powers by Jackie Kai Ellis is an absolute favorite of mine. Also, Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent. While it’s not quite ‘memoir’, it’s a touching non-fiction read that revolves around food, cooking and connection.

LOVED Dinner with Edward…listened to the audio twice

This is my favorite genre and I have been looking for more to add to my list. Thanks everyone! I have read many of these, but now have many more to read. I couple others I’ve enjoyed are My Life From Scratch by Gesine Bullock-Prado and 52 Loaves by William Alexander.

So many books, so little time! I second (third?) the recs for “Cooking for Mr. Latte” by Amanda Hesser and also for A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun. Kitchen Confidential and My Life in France are two of my favorite books of all time. As a chef now food blogger who moved to Paris last year, I feel like I need to write a memoir–so many of these wonderful books are about France, and Paris. I’m a big David Lebovitz fan as well and got to go to his book signing for Drinking French before the lockdowns hit. Awesome guy, and I highly recommend all his books.

This has been my favorite genre! I have read all of Ruth Reichl books and most on this list and have just purchased others on this list for a summer read so thank you. I would recommend 32 Yolks by Eric Ripert, Clementine in the Kitchen by Samuel Chamberlain, Shucked: Like on a New England Oyster Farm and loved The Apprentice by Jacques Pepin

I am reading My Life In France right now for a Vicarious Travel book task. It is wonderful!

First of all, thank you Anne so much. I needed this post right now. This is my favorite genre and just about every other book (in between MMD Book Club) I read is now a chef memoir or a book written about culinary travel. I have read many on Anne’s list, but started a new list because of all the great suggestions! Thank you one and all!

Here are two that I don’t think were in the comments: 1. It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time By Moira Hodgson – The author grew up as a child of a foreign diplomat and lived all over the world. You can’t believe her life is real. It’s a page-turner. 2. Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy by Michael Tucker – Do you remember LA Law? Michael Tucker and his wife Jill Eikenberry bought a home in Italy and all of the details about their life in Italy and Italian cooking are divine!

Can we just talk about your comment “bookstore devoted exclusively to cookbooks and cooking”….why aren’t there more bookstores like this!

Maman’s Homesick Pie:a Persian heart in an American Kitchen by Donia Bijan is really well done! A memoir of growing up in Iran pre-Revolution, exile, life in SF and France. Moving tribute to her mother.

I’m amazed at how many of these memoirs intertwine grief and tragedy!

This is one of my favorite genres! Thanks for this list – I’ve read a handful – Animal,Vegetable, Miracle and Blood Bones & Butter are two of my favs – always recommending them. I can’t wait to read more from this list! Also on my list to read is (new I think) the memoir Rebel Chef – by Dominique Crenn. Thank you!! Also, a bookststore dedicated to cookbooks and books about cooking- heaven!!

Food memoirs is one of my favorite genres. I’ve read a few of these, will happily try some of the others. I loved “The Best Cook In the World,” by Rick Bragg, about his mother’s Southern cooking in good times but mostly hard times (combined with Bragg’s hilarious and occasionally very sad family stories). Also, “Miriam’s Kitchen,” by Elizabeth Ehrlich, was very interesting and emotional for me. It’s the story of a young secular Jewish woman who enriches her faith and understanding of her culture as she cooks with her mother-in-law Miriam, a Holocaust survivor.

Still one of my favorites ‘Cooking for Mr Latte’ Amanda Hesser

Lunch in Paris and Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard

We read Chef Greg Atkinson’s At the Kitchen Table for our Preheated Baking Podcast book club in Episode 121: Hope Into Spring with Hot Cross Buns. Great story about building community and cooking your own food.

Here are 3 foodie reads that are worth the time and calories: My Life from Scratch by Gesine Bullock-Prado, Kitchen Gypsy by Joanne Weir, and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. Both Weir and Nosrat began their culinary careers at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse.

Elizabeth Luard hasn’t been mentioned – perhaps less known in the US (tho her praise is on the front cover of Ruth Reich’s To the Bone). Wonderful writer- lived in various parts of Europe bringing up four children – often alone as her husband traveled (prominent British journalists both of them). Very un squeamish, willing to learn from all around her – whether able to speak their language or not – often very funny, atmospheric, warm stories: Squirrel Pie, Flavours of Andalusia, A Cooks Year in a Welsh Farmhouse – my favourite. Luard is also a talented artist and these grace the pages of many of her books – the three mentioned. She also has a book of beautiful strip cartoon recipes coming out soon (ish?) She showed some at a book event – gorgeous!

Thank you so much for introducing me to Molly Wizenberg!

Has anyone read M.F.K. Fisher? Her books (too many to list here) about food are delightful. The book “A Life in Letters” of her Correspondence 1929-1991 is also a good read.

I really enjoyed the fun, dark novel “Recipe for a Perfect Wife” by Karma Brown, complete with recipes, where a present-day wife discovers a cookbook and eventually the secrets of the 1950s housewife who once lived in her home.

Missing from this wonderful list is Give a Girl a Knife, by Amy Thielen who writes masterfully about her strong midwestern roots, her life and times cooking in NY, and her decision to come home again.

Midnight Chicken hasn’t been mentioned. I’m in love with this author. It is very moving and has the most gorgeous cover and illustrations.

I’ve read many of these, but what an awesome list! I’ve just added a few from here to my TBR–thank you!!

Great list! Anything by Ruth Reichl for sure and The Cooking Gene is a gem. I loved The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg.

Coming into this discussion on 6/16/23 since it was mentioned in today’s Links I Love: Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl My Cooking Year, Ruth Reichl Comfort Me with Apples, Ruth Reichl

Not a memoir, but if you are a fan of Julia Child: Dearie, The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, Bob Spitz is a must read. The only book in the last 10 years I have re-read. It is delightful.

What a great list! Lots on here that I hadn’t heard of and added to my TBR.

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Personal Narrative: Food Memoir

Food Memoir: The Killing of a Hog Growing up on the countryside in Louisiana is one of the best experiences of my childhood. My grandfather would always go hunting, giving me the opportunity to eat various types of wildlife. There would be times when I could not stand the thought of eating certain animals, but then there were times when I could not pass up the opportunity. Even though, I was afraid to go near most animals at that time I still had a love for eating wildlife. Ever since I was a little kid my grandfather would always attempt to lure me in with his wildlife cooking. Even though, my grandmother banned him from cooking wildlife inside he still managed to continue, by building his own kitchen in the backyard. Throughout my childhood, my grandfather would kill, clean, and eat many different animals such as raccoons, rabbits, frogs, and even possums. Most of the time I would give his wildlife cooking a try, like the time he made fried frog legs. While the frog legs were still sizzling in the pan you could see them jumping from the nerves inside. Despite the horrific scene of the jumping frog legs in the skillet, it may have been one of the best …show more content…

In the bed of the pickup truck was a massive beast, which appeared to be a female hog that had been shot and killed. I questioned my grandmother wondering what use would my grandfather have for a dead hog. My grandmother was enraged because no one had thought to get her opinion before delivering the animal. So, I ran outside as fast as I could to see what was about to transpire. When I arrived outside I noticed a lot of nearby neighbors had come to see what was going on and to lend a helping hand. As my grandfather and four other men unloaded the hog from the pickup truck and placed it on a picnic table in the backyard, I realized the massive hog was about to be turned into a

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Through this food diary assignment, I have learned that I have a somewhat healthy diet, but it would be good for me to add some more nutritious foods to my diet. Through this analysis, I will discuss the ranges and limits of specific nutrients, and what my average levels were for the two days that I recorded for this assignment. According to my nutrient intake reports, my intake of calories, fiber, and cholesterol were all under or at the target value. The target value of calories is 2000 while my average value was only 1271 calories.

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Last year I was prit near 375 lbs and I knew something had to give. I have tried, low fat, low cal, counting macros and everything. I always still would gain! I would eat veggies and lean meat keeping under 1200 calories sometimes 800 when frustrated, I'd still wake up weighing more. Well to be honest, I believe the food pyramid is very, very inaccurate. I sometimes watch shows like my 600 lb life, for motivation for myself, because I need it still! I was to a point in my life I couldn't walk or stand more than 5 minutes! I'd have to sit on a chair to do dishes, I felt useless anymore honestly. One day something clicked and I seen a friend who posted about her 210 lb weight loss and started to read. I was blown away! I started it and I won't lie, I went out with a bang! Made a huge chocolate cake 13x9 and we ate half of it. I canned the rest. Within the first 3 days I was 5 lbs down! I couldn't believe it, without any exercise! People say oh you can't do that, but you can! You simply have to eat the RIGHT foods! 60% carbs isn't for us! That's what was set up by a group of people who think they know everything! They don't! But anyways if you want to learn how to eat the correct macros and learn to lose weight without worry, then this is for you! Ooh you have to give up some things! But tell yourself YOU'RE WORTH IT! I know what it feels like to hurt everyday and not be able to function and go out to the store cause you just cannot walk.…

Food College Essay

Change what people eat and you change their lives. Food is all about the stories that define our lives. When it comes to the rhythms and symbols of faith, it's easy to see the role that food plays. Food also reflects what people believe about family and community life. Understanding the role of food in cultural and religious practice is an important part of showing respect and responding to the needs of people from a range of religious communities. However, it is important to avoid assumptions about a person’s culture and beliefs. In my West Indian culture food plays a major role. A huge part of Western India is cosmopolitan in its food habits, but there is still plenty of traditional fare to be had. The cuisine of the Caribbean is like a cultural patchwork quilt. Food in the Caribbean reflects both the best and worst of the Caribbean's history. On the positive side, Caribbean culture has been compared with a popular stew there called Callao. The stew analogy comes from the many different ethic groups peacefully maintaining their traditions and customs while blending together, creating a distinct new flavor. On the negative side, many foods and cooking techniques derive from a history of violent European conquest, the importation of slaves from Africa, and the indentured servitude of immigrants in the plantation system. Within this context, students and other readers will understand the diverse island societies and ethnicity through their food cultures. Island food culture is an essential component in understanding the Caribbean past and…

Personal Narrative: Inside The Kitchen

As a Chinese-American, my family expected me to help out at the restaurant while maintaining straight A's in school. But, it wasn't easy; every day, I would report to the restaurant after school and immediately start working. Inside the kitchen, I would pack all the orders into aluminum containers, place them into a brown bag, and insert packets of sauces and utensils. Burns and cuts were common due to the terrible and tearable aluminum containers. Outside at the front desk, I would answer the seemingly endless ringing phones. In many instances, customers had to wait either on the phone or at the front desk for me to find their orders on the computer, even after they showed me where it was on the menu. During lunch hours, the pressure was even…

Bonny Wolf's Food Traditions

Food is something we all enjoy. It contains the essentials to sustaining life such as nutrients, fat and protein. But in a culture where shared meals are not that common as they once were, food also can create everlasting memories and connections with the people we hold the dearest. Bonny Wolf wrote a short essay called, “ Food Traditions: The Thread That Links Generations”, in which she states that, “Food binds families together, keeps generations connected and creates community” (Wolf 136). I strongly agree with this statement because not only do I have a treasure trove of memories all linked to food and family but also because there is so much evidence that provides back up for this claim.…

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Timothy is the best physical therapist we have in the Chicago area . He is one of the most energetic, positive, and outstanding therapist we have. If he believes there’s a will then there’s definitely a way. Positive thinking is the key to a healthy recovery. Maybe that’s why his face with his goofy grin is plastered on every billboard in the area. And it’s definitely why he has his own practice and is on the top 10 list of Best Physical Therapists in the state of Illinois.…

Personal Narrative: My Diet

I believe my diet is nutritionally adequate. I prepare fresh and healthier food at home and pack snacks from home too. Beside healthier food choice, packing snacks from home is inexpensive and save my time from traveling to any convenience store or fast food restaurants. I stay away from processed, frozen, and prepackaged foods. I make everything fresh and not frozen, but I travel two to three times to the store per week to buy fresh vegetables, fruits and other necessary stuffs.…

Childhood Memoir

Delray was a dirty, crime-ridden ghetto. Of course I was too young to know or understand this at the time. We lived in a one family house on the corner of Burdeno street, a few feet away from the junkyard, across the street from an open field that once bedded a couple of houses that burned, and then were torn down. Abandoned or burned houses were common in the city of Detroit. Most abandoned homes were claimed by the city’s growing problem with gangs. Other criminals would use these homes for their crimes, and I don’t think examples of this is necessary, but if you know the history of Detroit, then you would understand what I am talking about.…

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Amy Ettinger, who inspired readers with her life-affirming essays on dying, succumbs to cancer at 49

( JTA ) — Amy Ettinger,  an author and creative writing instructor who chronicled the last months of her life in articles for the Washington Post , died March 20 from cancer at her home in Santa Cruz, California. She was 49.

Ettinger’s essays focused on the things she was able to do and cherish despite her diagnosis with a rare, incurable cancer called leiomyosarcoma : seeing a live performance of “Mamma Mia!” with her 14-year-old daughter, Julianna; eating her favorite pastry from a San Francisco bakery.

“ I’ve learned that life is all about a series of moments, and I plan to spend as much remaining time as I can savoring each one, surrounded by the beauty of nature and my family and friends,”she wrote.

Ettinger was an occasional contributor to Kveller, the Jewish family website that is a Jewish Telegraphic Agency partner. There she wrote about her mother’s kugel recipe (“light brown on its crispy top, and the color of milky coffee in the middle”) , and how she, as a “non-observant Jew,” marked Yom Kippur — which in 2013 happened to fall on her 10th wedding anniversary .

“Like Yom Kippur, a wedding anniversary is a time to take a step back from your daily life — to weigh the good and bad, to contemplate your triumphs and missteps, to make a vow to do better individually and as a couple,” she wrote.

Ettinger was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in Cupertino, California. She discovered her calling as a journalist in high school. She majored in American literature at UC Santa Cruz and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1999.

Her writing appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Salon, CNN and Newsweek. In a 2021 article for AARP, she wrote how her mother’s death inspired her to learn Sheila Ettinger’s favorite game: mahjong. She taught writing classes at Stanford Continuing Studies.

In 2017,  Penguin Random House published her memoir-cum-travelogue “Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America.” In it she wrote how she keeps “between fifteen and thirty dollars’ worth of ice cream in my freezer at all times” — not to eat, but as an “emergency backup system” in case one of her favorite shops or stores runs out.

Her follow-up story to her Washington Post article, titled  “I Have Little Time Left. I Hope My Goodbye Inspires You,” appeared on the newspaper’s homepage less than two weeks before she died.

“I am choosing to focus my limited time and energy on doing the things I love with the people I care most about. It’s a formula that works, I think, no matter where you are in your life,” she wrote.

In an article written after she died , her husband, the writer Dan White, wrote that she had dictated her last essay to him from a reading room at UC Santa Cruz with a view of a redwood forest. He said she had gotten hundreds of personal responses: A handful “unwelcome, including missives from ultrareligious people wanting my proudly Jewish wife to get saved to spare herself from hellfire,” but the vast majority saying Ettinger had inspired them to make the most of their lives no matter the cards they’d been dealt.

“Amy had no way of predicting that the lines she composed on the spot would be calls to action for readers from all over the United States, as well as Canada, Poland, France and Greece,” White wrote.

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Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe discusses new essay collection

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe, a Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes, sees her great-grandmother as the quintessential storyteller. “It was her gift, not mine,” she writes in her new book “Thunder Song” — a collection of intimate, meditative essays woven together with metaphors, unabashed honesty and the echoes of spirit songs sung by generations of Coast Salish women.

“In our longhouse ceremonies, songs hold a spiritual power,” LaPointe says of spirit songs in her book. “There are certain songs for prayer, for healing.”

Outside of her family, the community most important to LaPointe was always the punk scene. LaPointe fell in love with punk as a kid in her trailer on the Swinomish Reservation — making mixtapes on a boombox, listening to haunting melodies and Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill screaming the lyrics to “White Boy.” Her book explores how she was drawn into the punk world and how it gave her a haven.

“I really feel like the pull was rooted in chosen family,” she says. “A lot of the folks that gravitate towards the punk scene are looking for that. And I was inspired by it. Punks and artists were fiery and passionate about things.” LaPointe is a member of the punk band Medusa Stare . 

LaPointe wears two silver customized name necklaces, one in English and one in her Indigenous language of Lushootseed. She was given her traditional Skagit name, taqʷšəblu, after her great-grandmother Vi taqʷšəblu Hilbert, a linguist who helped preserve the Lushootseed language. In 2006, Hilbert commissioned an orchestral work performed by the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall. She believed that Indigenous songs had the power to heal the world. She died in 2008 at 90 years old. 

When asked what her traditional name means, LaPointe jokes and laments that elders and anthropologists confirmed it doesn’t mean anything.

“I feel really ripped off in this because I want to say it means something so cool. Like ‘woman who runs with wolves,’” she says. “But no, it doesn’t mean anything.” 

Since entering her 30s, carrying this name proudly means carrying her great-grandmother’s legacy within her, a responsibility but also a gift — one she now embraces. “It was a name that always made me feel like I had a lot to live up to,” LaPointe says. “I’m a very different person than my great-grandmother, but I want to make her proud.”

LaPointe’s “Thunder Song,” despite being an essay collection, is just as much autobiographical as LaPointe’s first book “ Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk ,” which came out in 2022.

“There’s so much memoir and personal narrative in the essays that I think some of them absolutely do start off right where ‘Red Paint’ left off,” LaPointe says.

“Red Paint” was a true confessional, exploring trauma and how it shaped her with a magnifying glass held up to the most vulnerable parts of her childhood and adult life. “Thunder Song” is LaPointe’s call out to the world, a love letter to the Pacific Northwest, an Indigenous riot grrrl manifesto, a time machine to her great-grandmother and the story of her heart dealing with the collective historical trauma that continues to besiege Indigenous people.

“The world is a truly messed up place right now,” she says. “And I think in those moments — the protests, the pandemic, the forest fires — there was a lot of collective anxiety and trauma, and this collection is part of how I could make sense of it.”

Growing up on the Swinomish Reservation, LaPointe lived in the middle of the woods but was enamored by the city. She imagined moving to Seattle and becoming a music journalist or an artist. A runaway at 13 with a court-approved emancipation at 15, eventually, she spent much of her late teens and early 20s living, working and performing in Seattle. 

At 25, she was at a crossroads. Her grandparents had given her a college brochure and she had also been asked to go on tour with a circus band.

“It felt like an assignment from my great-grandmother coming through from the spirit world,” LaPointe says. “She was like, ‘We know you want to go join the circus — but go pursue an education.’”

She decided against going on tour and moved to Santa Fe, N.M., to enroll at the Institute of American Indian Arts. After graduating in 2014, LaPointe moved back to Seattle. She now splits her time between Washington and Southern California — where her partner, Blaine, lives — but she cannot stay away from her Tacoma home for too long. “I have to come back and recharge,” she says. “Being in my Coast Salish territory, literally my ancestral homelands, feels really powerful and significant to me.”

In “Thunder Song,” LaPointe traverses both trauma and tender joyous moments with fearlessness and grace. She talks about sexual assault, abortion, miscarriage and how love depleted and defeated the women in her ancestry.

She expertly crosses between her contemporary influences and Native heritage as she details her obsession with “The Little Mermaid” and the story of the Maiden of Deception Pass, who sacrificed herself for her people, or the story of the Basket Ogress, who could make children disappear, alongside the reality of missing and murdered Indigenous women who are forgotten. 

With special care to the people closest to her, this collection gives LaPointe space to explore past and present relationships including significant moments with her mother, who she, at times, has had a tumultuous relationship with. LaPointe says she was anxious when she showed her mother a draft of the essay detailing their story. 

“We were on one of our walks. She was like, ‘It was so powerful. It was really beautiful. It was right. I’m so proud of you,’” LaPointe says. “That felt like a good ‘mom blessing’ because that [essay] was not easy. I was shaking in my boots.”

Throughout the book, LaPointe narrates how she wades through the various intersections of her identity as a queer, mixed heritage woman, as an artist, as a writer, as a daughter and as a friend.

“Of course, I’m tribally enrolled but I contain multitudes,” she says. “Our traditional languages and stories are really important to me, but so is making mixtapes and going to rowdy punk shows.”

AUTHOR EVENTS

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe, Counterpoint, 256 pp., $27

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Books | 20 new books coming this spring you won’t…

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Books | 20 new books coming this spring you won’t want to miss.

It’s finally spring, which comes as a relief to those who have been looking forward to stowing away their sweaters and gloves — and to book lovers as well, who know that publishers unleash a flood of new titles this time of year.

Here are 20 books coming out now and in the following months that are perfect for reading on your porch, at the ballpark during the seventh-inning stretch, or wherever else you choose to welcome the sun back into your life.

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“Table for Two: Fictions”

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Publication Date: Out now

“The Audacity”

Author: Ryan Chapman

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“You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World”

Editor: Ada Limón

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“A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene: 1989-1999”

Author: Tom Maxwell

What It’s About: The 1990s were a banner decade for indie rock, thanks in no small part to the North Carolina college town of Chapel Hill. Maxwell, a former singer and guitarist for the Squirrel Nut Zippers, takes a look at how Chapel Hill, and the nearby town of Carrboro, gave birth to bands like Superchunk, Polvo, and Archers of Loaf.

“Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder”

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What It’s About: The legendary author of “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses” writes about the aftermath of the 2022 knife attack in Chautauqua, New York, that left him unable to use one hand or see out of one eye.

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“The Whole Staggering Mystery: A Story of Fathers Lost and Found”

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“Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances”

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“The Body Farm: Stories”

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Publication Date: May 14

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Author: Hari Kunzru

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“Accordion Elegies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico”

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Publication Date: May 28

“Everything And Nothing At Once: A Black Man’s Reimagined Soundtrack for the Future”

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She Lied, Cheated and Stole. Then She Wrote a Book About It.

In her buzzy memoir, “Sociopath,” Patric Gagne shows herself more committed to revel in her naughtiness than to demystify the condition.

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By Alexandra Jacobs

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SOCIOPATH: A Memoir, by Patric Gagne

That Patric Gagne is a sociopath isn’t news. She wrote about it for The New York Times’s Modern Love column, which led to a deal for a book that I have just hurled across the room like a discus, and an extensive pre-publication interview with my colleague David Marchese.

Gagne seems also to be afflicted, or blessed, with hyperthymesia, a.k.a highly superior autobiographical memory : a rare condition publicized in an old “ 60 Minutes” segment featuring the actress Marilu Henner.

How else, unless Gagne was concealing a small tape recorder on her person since childhood (not out of the question, of course, for a sociopath) does she recall decades-old dialogue in such precise detail? And incidentally, how come so much of that is rat-a-tat banter suitable for a corny ’90s rom-com?

“I’d kill myself if everywhere I went, people knew who I was,” Gagne, who in young adulthood follows her father into the music business, tells a flirtatious rock guitarist to whom she’s confided her sociopathy.

“Instead of killing other people, you mean?” he replies.

The ostensible goal of “Sociopath,” as the memoir is titled in dramatic Sharpie letters on the cover, is to address exactly this sort of misconception, to destigmatize an oft-misunderstood personality type. Most of Gagne’s kind are not murderers. She argues that sociopathy is a spectrum disorder, like autism, affecting “millions,” though there’s no source for this number; citation in “Sociopath” is not footnotes but excited “flipping” through library books.

Other than stabbing a “neighborhood terror” in the head with a pencil when she was in second grade, flinging a glass pitcher at a wall and occasionally clawing herself in frustration to the point of bleeding, Gagne has tended to be more creepy than violent in her transgressive behavior. Relief from a certain temperamental blankness has come, she writes, by breaking into other people’s homes and joyriding in their dubiously borrowed cars.

“The silence of a structure that has just been broken into is unlike any other,” the author writes, adding with unnerving humanization, “It’s almost like the house can’t believe what just happened and has gasped, taking all the air with it.”

Gagne tells of stealing and stockpiling trivial objects, like a pair of Ringo Starr’s glasses when she was a toddler, and as an adult a Statue of Liberty key chain that she used to signal to her watchful then-boyfriend, David, when she’d done something “unorthodox.” (David, no saint, also joined her for sex in the empty houses.) Gagne mulled filching a life-size ceramic tiger from Hugh Hefner’s office during a party at the Playboy Mansion, but settled for a notepad.

Some people crash weddings for the free food and drinks; she sneaks into funerals, strangers’ grief washing over her like a spa cleanse. There’s an elaborate subplot about Gagne stalking a woman named Ginny who’s trying to extort her father, the revelation that causes the obviously enchanted guitarist to do a “spit take.” (Spit takes being about as common in real life as rimshots.)

Indeed a large swath of “Sociopath” is devoted to Gagne’s ability to succeed amid the “dark magic” of the music business, which, we’re reminded, tends to attract difficult personalities such as that guitarist (she dubs him Max Magus), for whom she may or may not be leaving dependable David.

You’ve heard the phrase “has no chill.” Gagne portrays herself as all c hill: a “blond, ferret-toting Wednesday Addams,” as she writes of an upbringing stressed by divorce and a move to Florida.

Her younger sister, Harlowe, nicknames her Captain Apathy, drawing a cartoon of a masked superhero. (Somebody dial Mattel!) Like Diana in “A Chorus Line,” Patric feels nothing — happiness and anger in brief spurts, maybe, but not empathy or remorse, a syndrome she likens to bad eyesight.

She does, however, curse an awful lot, sometimes in ALL CAPS. One woman is dismissed as a “basic bitch” and worse. Repetition and weather reports (“the breeze whistled its approval as I approached the sports car”) blight the narrative. And when Gagne, now a clinical psychologist and married mother of two, writes of her longing for incarceration (“a short stint in lockup sounded interesting”), one wishes someone had gently placed a few more studies on her library pile.

Sociopathy is no longer indexed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Gagne writes, replaced by antisocial personality disorder, several criteria of which don’t resonate with her. She guards her medical identity like a ceramic tiger, scornfully labeling a messy record-label executive named Jennifer a “fauxciopath.”(A term the author is attempting to trademark .)

I have little problem with “Sociopath” as a porthole into the unusual mind of one woman — albeit a smudged porthole; she admits to changing names, dates and details. It’s when Gagne swerves the wheel of that purloined auto into the scholarly realm, speeding through the psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley’s 1941 seminal work on psychopathy, “The Mask of Sanity,” and topics like cognitive behavioral therapy, that sweat begins to bead on my boringly neurotypical forehead.

Those Sharpie letters proclaim a Ph.D. in clinical psychology , but since her dissertation is not available online, nor referenced by other scholars, “Sociopath” is venturing out into the hot media lights uncomfortably alone. This is an important topic, treated too flightily: begging for peer review, not book review.

SOCIOPATH : A Memoir | By Patric Gagne | Simon & Schuster | 368 pp. | $28.99

Alexandra Jacobs is a Times book critic and occasional features writer. She joined The Times in 2010. More about Alexandra Jacobs

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