TASTING HOME

WOMEN WRITING THEIR LIVES: AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION

June 5, Books Inc., 1760 Fourth Street Berkeley, CA, 7:00 pm.
(510-525-7777)

Join two award-winning memoir writers as they read from and discuss their new books and talk about their personal writing journeys. They will touch on themes and messages in memoir, the sometimes-difficult decisions that must be made, and answer questions about their writing process.

Judith Newton, Professor Emerita, UC Davis, Women and Gender Studies
Author of Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen (She Writes Press)

Linda Joy Myers,  Founder and President of the National Association of Memoir Writers
Author of Don’t Call Me Mother (She Writes Press)

ROOTS : A NEW ANTHOLOGY OF FOOD WRITING, COMING IN JUNE .  (Includes material from Tasting Home.)

Roots is a love story about food—an exploration of its rich interconnectedness with culture, memory, and discovery, penned by over forty authors and personalities from the culinary blogosphere. The anthology’s deeply personal essays serve up family history, local lore, and tantalizing stories of worlds newly discovered through food, accompanied by original photography and a collection of recipes that, no matter how far flung, taste like home. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17938134-roots

Leicester Square Station

I was to meet my daughter, Hannah, in London where she was taking  dreamy courses like “The British Museum,”  “Shakespeare,” and “Contemporary Drama” at U. C. Berkeley’s campus abroad. We were to find each other outside the Tube stop at Leicester Square and, as I approached the station, I began to look around. When she left home she’d been dressed in her uniform of jeans, polo shirt, sweatshirt, and sneakers. But the young woman I saw from a distance was wearing boots, a long black skirt, and a stylish, close-fitting, suede jacket.  Hannah? I wondered. Continue reading →

DAVIS, Calif.—On May 17, 7:30 pm, at the Avid Reader, 617 2nd St, Davis, CA 95616, award-winning memoir writers Linda Joy Myers and Judith Newton will read from and discuss their recently published memoirs, Don’t Call Me Mother and Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen. Moderated by Sacramento Book Talk columnist Trina Drotar, the event will focus on the authors’ personal writing journeys, themes and messages in memoir, the sometimes-difficult decisions that must be made, and questions from the audience. Continue reading →

Mastering the Art

Berkeley, September 1964:  I placed my hands in a bowl of butter and flour with the intention of rubbing them together until they resembled flakes of oatmeal. Mother had never used anything but a fork to mix her dough, but I was following Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And Mastering the Art strictly maintained that “a necessary part of learning how to cook is to get the feel of the dough in your fingers.”

I didn’t mind getting my fingers all gummy with the dough because, in my imagination, this messy procedure completely divorced my venture into baking from my mother’s pastry practices—and from the sorrows of my relationship to her. No pie crust here! I was mixing “sweet short paste,” which called for a quarter-pound of butter and only three tablespoons of shortening—in clear opposition to my mother’s Basic Pie Crust recipe, with its cup of Crisco, half-cube of margarine, and secret pinch of baking powder. Continue reading →

Excerpt from Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1968-1977)

Before I entered the women’s group at Penn, I didn’t much trust other women. (Mother had left me wary about members of our sex.)  In the end, I would have a long history with such groups—and the menus would become increasingly elaborate– but it was Claire who prepared me, who first opened me to the love and care of women.

Sometime in 1966, when we were still in Berkeley, Jake had presented Dick and me to the new woman in his life, Claire. Claire had a fragile elegance that was very appealing. She wore glamorous, sometimes vintage, clothes—a pair of forties-style white pants, say, with a beige, loose-sleeved blouse printed in muted, rosy flowers. Her heavy hair, the color of dark honey, hung well below her shoulders. The thinnest of eyebrows floated about her long, large, hazel eyes. And her voice was whispery, as if full of secrets you’d like to share. Continue reading →