Welcome to Litsy!

I can‘t even begin to say how much I loved this book. It isn‘t just about food, but how it brings us together, especially during times of grieving. It is also about memory, and how what we smell, taste, and prepare burrow in the deepest places of our souls. In this memoir, the author tells the story her father wanted her to tell. In the darkest times, the memory of something to eat was always there. Highly recommend!

Interview with the author about this amazing memoir.

Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/totally-booked-with-zibby/id1366633318?i=1...

I want to be a good friend, but when Cindy announces that we‘ll be busing through the night, something bursts inside me. I know she needs me to act like a supportive participant, an adult, a normal human being, but a toxic sludge is leaking into my limbs. I start to shake. Fear rises in my chest. I cannot go on a bus. A bus is too much like a train and a train is really just a cattle car and since my father made the reverse journey, from ⬇️

My composure is fragile. No matter where I go, home or away, I am instinctively circumspect about my identity. I carry a fear of cops and soldiers and customs officers—anyone with a severe haircut and a uniform—in my blood. Never do I walk around telling people I‘m Jewish.

We came out of the kitchen and wandered into the bar, where the soda gun glowed in the dim light. We shot Coke, Sprite, and tonic into tall glasses. We poured grenadine, thick and syrupy, through the little spout attached to the top of the bottle into a little metal cup on a stick. When I dumped the syrup into our glasses, the mixture that had been dull and brown turned a beautiful pink. I shook in Tabasco and grabbed maraschino cherries ⬇️

There was a lot of beauty in this childhood, but there was also a sadness inside me that I didn‘t understand. I was a lucky girl, born in a safe place, with tons of food and loving parents, yet I had stones in my chest, heavy and gray. As I moved through the ages Dad was during the war—nine in the first ghetto, eleven in Lodz, thirteen when he last saw his mother and sisters on the platform at Auschwitz—a voice from inside commanded me to ⬇️

Mom wasn‘t the type to fuss with a vegetable garden, but a rhubarb plant sprung up near our back fence every year. Julie showed me how to brace my feet on either side of the plant, grab a stalk, and yank upward. Careful, the leaves are poisonous! We wet crimson stems under the kitchen faucet and dragged them through the sugar drawer, the shock of sweet and sour making my teeth ache.

In this memoir, the author recounts her time learning family recipes with her Grandma, and slowly digging out her Dad‘s life experiences by learning to make the dishes that brought him joy as a child.

I loved this one. One of the main issues discussed was how we carry our family‘s trauma and make it a central part of our identity, and how she eventually became her family‘s storyteller through food.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I love memoirs, food and chefs. So when I was offered this #arc today, I couldn‘t say yes fast enough!

Pub Date: 1/21/25