February 15, 2022
A memoir weaving the author's personal history with South Asian food and folkways. "Food comforts a need that connects us across borders," writes Ghosh in this well-turned collection of essays combining cuisine with social and personal politics. As a child, the author moved with her family from eastern India to Delhi, and the cultural shock--bigger crowds, different flavors than her Bengali upbringing--prompts her fond recall of food-shopping trips with her father and her lifelong efforts to access the foods she loved most growing up. (The book contains a handful of recipes.) But food, she recognizes, is also often a source of rifts, even violence. In one essay, Ghosh pairs a recollection of her favorite Sikh-owned restaurant in her current home, San Diego, with anti-Sikh attacks in America and India. In another, she examines her strained relationship with her ex-husband's family while reporting on the rivalry between a pair of Indonesian prata restaurants. Throughout, the book is structured to insist that food is inextricable from larger cultural forces. Each essay shifts across experiences (sometimes abruptly), but Ghosh writes especially well through her memories, from tender (as a child shopping for goat with her father in a bustling Delhi market) to terrifying (desperately escaping a hotel room she was accidentally locked in before a job presentation). Breaking through hotel drywall serves as a metaphor for escaping a husband who's verbally abusive when he's not neglectful, a story that in turn is interwoven with another about an Indian chef in San Diego who was murdered by her partner. Ghosh clearly sees the downsides of food culture--indentured servitude, racism, oversugared and watered-down variations of her favorite dishes--but her mood is also often celebratory. She concludes by writing about hosting a Diwali party and reconnecting with food during the pandemic: "Roots, if strong, survive many a pause." A likable food memoir from a self-aware and culturally astute author.
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