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Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir
Named a Favorite Book for Southerners in 2020 by Garden & Gun
"Donovan is such a vivid writer—smart, raunchy, vulnerable and funny— that if her vaunted caramel cakes and sugar pies are half as good as her prose, well, I'd be open to even giving that signature buttermilk whipped cream she tops her desserts with a try.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
Noted chef and James Beard Award-winning essayist Lisa Donovan helped establish some of the South's most important kitchens, and her pastry work is at the forefront of a resurgence in traditional desserts. Yet Donovan struggled to make a living in an industry where male chefs built successful careers on the stories, recipes, and culinary heritage passed down from generations of female cooks and cooks of color. At one of her career peaks, she made the perfect dessert at a celebration for food-world goddess Diana Kennedy. When Kennedy asked why she had not heard of her, Donovan said she did not know. "I do," Kennedy said, "Stop letting men tell your story."
OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HUNGER is Donovan's searing, beautiful, and searching chronicle of reclaiming her own story and the narrative of the women who came before her. Her family's matriarchs found strength and passion through food, and they inspired Donovan's accomplished career. Donovan's love language is hospitality, and she wants to welcome everyone to the table of good food and fairness.
Donovan herself had been told at every juncture that she wasn't enough: she came from a struggling southern family that felt ashamed of its own mixed race heritage and whose elders diminished their women. She survived abuse and assault as a young mother. But Donovan's salvations were food, self-reliance, and the network of women in food who stood by her.
In the school of the late John Egerton, OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HUNGER is an unforgettable Southern journey of class, gender, and race as told at table.
"Donovan is such a vivid writer—smart, raunchy, vulnerable and funny— that if her vaunted caramel cakes and sugar pies are half as good as her prose, well, I'd be open to even giving that signature buttermilk whipped cream she tops her desserts with a try.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
Noted chef and James Beard Award-winning essayist Lisa Donovan helped establish some of the South's most important kitchens, and her pastry work is at the forefront of a resurgence in traditional desserts. Yet Donovan struggled to make a living in an industry where male chefs built successful careers on the stories, recipes, and culinary heritage passed down from generations of female cooks and cooks of color. At one of her career peaks, she made the perfect dessert at a celebration for food-world goddess Diana Kennedy. When Kennedy asked why she had not heard of her, Donovan said she did not know. "I do," Kennedy said, "Stop letting men tell your story."
OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HUNGER is Donovan's searing, beautiful, and searching chronicle of reclaiming her own story and the narrative of the women who came before her. Her family's matriarchs found strength and passion through food, and they inspired Donovan's accomplished career. Donovan's love language is hospitality, and she wants to welcome everyone to the table of good food and fairness.
Donovan herself had been told at every juncture that she wasn't enough: she came from a struggling southern family that felt ashamed of its own mixed race heritage and whose elders diminished their women. She survived abuse and assault as a young mother. But Donovan's salvations were food, self-reliance, and the network of women in food who stood by her.
In the school of the late John Egerton, OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HUNGER is an unforgettable Southern journey of class, gender, and race as told at table.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2020
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October 16, 2020
I can count the number of pastry chef memoirs I have read on one finger - this one! And Lisa Donovan is my kind of chef, "uncomplicated and thoughtfully prepared - nothing flashy, just good, just delicious, and ultimately, just comforting." She writes about her life starting with an unexpected pregnancy and an abusive partner, struggling to make ends meet, how she found her pastry feet in Nashville, and how she pulled elements of her family background into her craft.
For those that love chef gossip there is some about Sean Brock and the Husk years as that's what she is most known for, but she has had significant experiences before and after. (You can watch her make her most known dish on The Mind of a Chef.)
I actually think what will be most interesting is what she does next. There is a sense in the book that she is only now really stepping into claiming her power.
The memoir came out August 4 and I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. I also saw the author speak at the Southern Festival of Books.
For those that love chef gossip there is some about Sean Brock and the Husk years as that's what she is most known for, but she has had significant experiences before and after. (You can watch her make her most known dish on The Mind of a Chef.)
I actually think what will be most interesting is what she does next. There is a sense in the book that she is only now really stepping into claiming her power.
The memoir came out August 4 and I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. I also saw the author speak at the Southern Festival of Books.
June 29, 2020
Man! The first 6/8 of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger by Lisa Donovan was fierce, and visceral and I could not devour it fast enough. The writing was tight and true and honest and, quite frankly, remarkable. I kept wondering why the author had ever even bothered to pick up a pastry wheel.
Insights like this hooked me like a fish:
"I was far away from the story of myself" and "I had become skeptical on the inside and fantastically rigid on the outside", and "I think on many levels, I had been shown only how to play defense, never offense", and "we are all each other's mothers, all of us women, we have to take care of each other in that way'.
The author nailed the complex craziness of being a woman and a daughter and ambitious and introspective and fierce and flawed. And her story of those early years - the struggles and the happy times, the really awful bits that formed her into the woman she was becoming - were engaging and real. As she grubbed through the depth of her relationships to the women around her and the women with whom she shared blood, I was deeply touched, and encouraged to stop reading and think about my own relationships, my own women.
If I'd stopped reading at that point, this would have been a 10-star review.
The next 8th - the part where she gets into the heart and soul of her career as a successful pastry chef - held little of the promise of the earlier pages. The author's glorious prose was replaced with a sort of third-person narrative, a list of successes and failures, of disappointments, excuses and name-dropping. I admit to some skimming.
Thankfully, the final 8th of the book was redemptive and filled with the same fierceness and insight I craved. Brilliant!
Lisa Donovan has a wonderful sense of womanhood and truth, and her voice is one we need - and by we I mean women who have been thru the woodshed of life and now know our power and place.
She articulates what we all understand deep in our hearts. Truths like this:
"Women talk about their mothers, it's true. But we do so quietly, and we do so protectively, because it is a scared thing that many of us don't know what to do with until the day they, or we, die."
Amen. That's the voice I want to hear.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is a book about womanhood and a woman's place, and the author is rich in important stories. That she happens to be a world-class pastry chef is an interesting background to her story and her wisdom, but it isn't the story that will keep readers reading. So, if you're looking for a "Yes, Chef!" kind of read, this isn't it. If, however, you're looking for a book about a strong, courageous, flawed and authentic woman, this is your book.
Insights like this hooked me like a fish:
"I was far away from the story of myself" and "I had become skeptical on the inside and fantastically rigid on the outside", and "I think on many levels, I had been shown only how to play defense, never offense", and "we are all each other's mothers, all of us women, we have to take care of each other in that way'.
The author nailed the complex craziness of being a woman and a daughter and ambitious and introspective and fierce and flawed. And her story of those early years - the struggles and the happy times, the really awful bits that formed her into the woman she was becoming - were engaging and real. As she grubbed through the depth of her relationships to the women around her and the women with whom she shared blood, I was deeply touched, and encouraged to stop reading and think about my own relationships, my own women.
If I'd stopped reading at that point, this would have been a 10-star review.
The next 8th - the part where she gets into the heart and soul of her career as a successful pastry chef - held little of the promise of the earlier pages. The author's glorious prose was replaced with a sort of third-person narrative, a list of successes and failures, of disappointments, excuses and name-dropping. I admit to some skimming.
Thankfully, the final 8th of the book was redemptive and filled with the same fierceness and insight I craved. Brilliant!
Lisa Donovan has a wonderful sense of womanhood and truth, and her voice is one we need - and by we I mean women who have been thru the woodshed of life and now know our power and place.
She articulates what we all understand deep in our hearts. Truths like this:
"Women talk about their mothers, it's true. But we do so quietly, and we do so protectively, because it is a scared thing that many of us don't know what to do with until the day they, or we, die."
Amen. That's the voice I want to hear.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is a book about womanhood and a woman's place, and the author is rich in important stories. That she happens to be a world-class pastry chef is an interesting background to her story and her wisdom, but it isn't the story that will keep readers reading. So, if you're looking for a "Yes, Chef!" kind of read, this isn't it. If, however, you're looking for a book about a strong, courageous, flawed and authentic woman, this is your book.
August 1, 2020
My review for the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Even though women perform 80% of the meal preparation within their households, fewer than 7% of American restaurants are led by female chefs. This pernicious tendency for women to be seen as behind-the-scenes nurturers — both of their own immediate families and of the egos of the men with whom they work — while men get hailed as gods of food, is just one of the many injustices that Lisa Donovan addresses with anger, honesty, wit and passion in her debut memoir, “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.”
A James Beard Award-winning author, Donovan worked as the pastry chef to Tandy Wilson and Sean Brock, two of the South’s most influential contemporary chefs, and — in part thanks to her famed Buttermilk Road pop-up suppers — developed a following in her own right for her bold inclusion of such traditional and often overlooked fare as Church Cakes and pies as the finishing flourishes to fine dining experiences.
But the book opens, wisely, with Donovan in Costa Rica, having deliberately removed herself from the environment where she had struggled so hard to shine. “The industry in which I had spent the last fifteen years making my way had become a markedly [messed up] cast of angry, drunken, ego-driven and deeply sad people,” she writes. “Their marriages were falling apart, their careers hinged on other people’s money, and their restaurants were being run by unqualified, young cooks because the new expectation (and intention) was to be famous, to damn near immortalize yourself. Not to be good.”
From there, she takes the reader back to her origins in a lower-middle-class Southern military family, one that suppressed — with shame and secrecy — their Mexican and Zuni heritage, including her beloved grandmother who “did not have an education above the sixth grade,” a fact which Donovan only learned when she was 40. She also creates a portrait of her adopted city of Nashville and its transformation — while she, her spouse, and kids are living there — from a scrappy place with space for artists and misfits into a gentrified playground for “trust-fund frat boys and too-skinny sorority girls who thought the dumber they sounded, the sexier they were.”
With an impeccable blend of deadpan humor, candor and righteousness, Donovan critiques not only the rampant sexism in haute cuisine, but also the misogyny prevalent in our culture at large, not shying away from depicting her experiences of domestic partner abuse, rape and gender-based pay disparity. Her technique-driven, historically inflected foray into the kitchens of acclaimed restaurants ends up being her roundabout way of finding not only her vocation as a chef, but also as a writer, ultimately repudiating the toxic, unsustainable, male-driven standards wrongly accepted as inevitable in far too many back-of-house milieus.
Donovan chooses to open the book with an epigraph from Ursula K. Le Guin: “We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experiences as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.” Assertive and empowering, Donovan, here, has made a new mountain.
Even though women perform 80% of the meal preparation within their households, fewer than 7% of American restaurants are led by female chefs. This pernicious tendency for women to be seen as behind-the-scenes nurturers — both of their own immediate families and of the egos of the men with whom they work — while men get hailed as gods of food, is just one of the many injustices that Lisa Donovan addresses with anger, honesty, wit and passion in her debut memoir, “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.”
A James Beard Award-winning author, Donovan worked as the pastry chef to Tandy Wilson and Sean Brock, two of the South’s most influential contemporary chefs, and — in part thanks to her famed Buttermilk Road pop-up suppers — developed a following in her own right for her bold inclusion of such traditional and often overlooked fare as Church Cakes and pies as the finishing flourishes to fine dining experiences.
But the book opens, wisely, with Donovan in Costa Rica, having deliberately removed herself from the environment where she had struggled so hard to shine. “The industry in which I had spent the last fifteen years making my way had become a markedly [messed up] cast of angry, drunken, ego-driven and deeply sad people,” she writes. “Their marriages were falling apart, their careers hinged on other people’s money, and their restaurants were being run by unqualified, young cooks because the new expectation (and intention) was to be famous, to damn near immortalize yourself. Not to be good.”
From there, she takes the reader back to her origins in a lower-middle-class Southern military family, one that suppressed — with shame and secrecy — their Mexican and Zuni heritage, including her beloved grandmother who “did not have an education above the sixth grade,” a fact which Donovan only learned when she was 40. She also creates a portrait of her adopted city of Nashville and its transformation — while she, her spouse, and kids are living there — from a scrappy place with space for artists and misfits into a gentrified playground for “trust-fund frat boys and too-skinny sorority girls who thought the dumber they sounded, the sexier they were.”
With an impeccable blend of deadpan humor, candor and righteousness, Donovan critiques not only the rampant sexism in haute cuisine, but also the misogyny prevalent in our culture at large, not shying away from depicting her experiences of domestic partner abuse, rape and gender-based pay disparity. Her technique-driven, historically inflected foray into the kitchens of acclaimed restaurants ends up being her roundabout way of finding not only her vocation as a chef, but also as a writer, ultimately repudiating the toxic, unsustainable, male-driven standards wrongly accepted as inevitable in far too many back-of-house milieus.
Donovan chooses to open the book with an epigraph from Ursula K. Le Guin: “We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experiences as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.” Assertive and empowering, Donovan, here, has made a new mountain.
July 15, 2020
Lisa Donovan worked her way from a server in a small town restaurant to pastry chef for renowned Southern restaurants. The road to get there held plenty of roadblocks which Donovan found a way through because of her desire to achieve and most importantly take care of her family.
She struggled as a young single mother after escaping an abusive relationship but completed college with her first child strapped to her chest. She struggled with the narrative of her life because of her family’s issues with their heritage and the abuse of their matriarchs but has honored both with her career and her journey through motherhood.
My biggest take away from this memoir (other than the obvious fact that Donovan is a talented writer) is that Lisa Donovan is a survivor. She cultivated her love of food and it became not only her passion but an impressive career, despite a male-dominated industry that did not find much value in a woman who divided her time between work and family. She has fought every step of the way with hard work and brutal honesty that she shares with readers in the pages of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, giving an unflinching look into not only her personal life but also class, gender, and heritage. She isn't afraid to call out the restaurant industry for its blatant sexism and the investors who invest more in the publicity than in the staff, while sharing her vision for the future of the industry.
**Trigger warning for sexual assault and physical/mental abuse.**
Thanks to Penguin Press and Edelweiss for providing me with a DRC in exchange for my honest review. Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir is scheduled for release on August 4, 2020.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
She struggled as a young single mother after escaping an abusive relationship but completed college with her first child strapped to her chest. She struggled with the narrative of her life because of her family’s issues with their heritage and the abuse of their matriarchs but has honored both with her career and her journey through motherhood.
My biggest take away from this memoir (other than the obvious fact that Donovan is a talented writer) is that Lisa Donovan is a survivor. She cultivated her love of food and it became not only her passion but an impressive career, despite a male-dominated industry that did not find much value in a woman who divided her time between work and family. She has fought every step of the way with hard work and brutal honesty that she shares with readers in the pages of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, giving an unflinching look into not only her personal life but also class, gender, and heritage. She isn't afraid to call out the restaurant industry for its blatant sexism and the investors who invest more in the publicity than in the staff, while sharing her vision for the future of the industry.
**Trigger warning for sexual assault and physical/mental abuse.**
Thanks to Penguin Press and Edelweiss for providing me with a DRC in exchange for my honest review. Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir is scheduled for release on August 4, 2020.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
February 4, 2021
What a monstrosity. I don't recall ever being so strongly put off by a book, so quickly. To be fair, I'm only like 50 pages in (and doubt that I'll read much more).
Here are things that made me immediately repulsed by this book, in no particular order:
1) The sentiment the author expresses of "I always knew I could never do any work that wasn't meaningful" (or spiritually fulfilling or something). What a privileged crock of shit. There are so many people working so much harder than you, for less than minimum wage, who would love to have the insane privilege to make such a ridiculous proclamation, but they don't have a flipping choice. So get over yourself already lady.
2) People who are obsessed with New York. It's a city, jesus get over it. "Oh my word, I just knew I had to get to that big old city with its skyscrapers and bustling opportunities" or whatever. That's so boring. And then once they've lived there for any length of time, forget about it - it's all they're ever going to talk about. Yes it's a big city, congratulations, you've ascertained the size of the place.
3) The fact that the book opens with some white lady escaping to Costa Rica (really) for a spiritual cleansing after the trauma of not liking her job for a while... I mean, sure, I'd like to go to Costa Rica to hang out and get driven around by some old guy whose job is to pretend to enjoy my company, but isn't that too boring and horribly cliched to make the opening scene of a book? No, it's not? Well ok, if you're sure...
I thought I would like this book. I mean, the title is fun and the cover is pretty. But wow is the author's voice off-putting.
Here are things that made me immediately repulsed by this book, in no particular order:
1) The sentiment the author expresses of "I always knew I could never do any work that wasn't meaningful" (or spiritually fulfilling or something). What a privileged crock of shit. There are so many people working so much harder than you, for less than minimum wage, who would love to have the insane privilege to make such a ridiculous proclamation, but they don't have a flipping choice. So get over yourself already lady.
2) People who are obsessed with New York. It's a city, jesus get over it. "Oh my word, I just knew I had to get to that big old city with its skyscrapers and bustling opportunities" or whatever. That's so boring. And then once they've lived there for any length of time, forget about it - it's all they're ever going to talk about. Yes it's a big city, congratulations, you've ascertained the size of the place.
3) The fact that the book opens with some white lady escaping to Costa Rica (really) for a spiritual cleansing after the trauma of not liking her job for a while... I mean, sure, I'd like to go to Costa Rica to hang out and get driven around by some old guy whose job is to pretend to enjoy my company, but isn't that too boring and horribly cliched to make the opening scene of a book? No, it's not? Well ok, if you're sure...
I thought I would like this book. I mean, the title is fun and the cover is pretty. But wow is the author's voice off-putting.
July 14, 2021
A powerful memoir from renowned pastry chef Lisa Donovan, which deals with her difficult childhood in a struggling, mixed-race Southern family; her abusive relationship with the father of her first child; and her struggle to make a place for herself in a restaurant industry which is often sexist and classist. (I flat-out gasped at her saying that even when she'd reached a point in her career that she had a national profile, her boss was still only paying her $15 an hour, and told her that if she wanted a raise she'd have to fire one of her junior staff to get it.)
Donovan is a vivid and robust writer, by turns humorous and bitter, although prone to over-writing in a way I always think of as symptomatic of an MFA. I was also a bit uneasy at times with how much she equated womanhood with the provision of food and with motherhood. Still, when Donovan's on, she's on: “Women are revered straight into abjection, useful only as a totem of inspiration. When we go to make that work our own, we are unable to survive in the industry the men built, the one they sell our wares within.” Preach.
Donovan is a vivid and robust writer, by turns humorous and bitter, although prone to over-writing in a way I always think of as symptomatic of an MFA. I was also a bit uneasy at times with how much she equated womanhood with the provision of food and with motherhood. Still, when Donovan's on, she's on: “Women are revered straight into abjection, useful only as a totem of inspiration. When we go to make that work our own, we are unable to survive in the industry the men built, the one they sell our wares within.” Preach.
November 10, 2021
Digital audiobook read by the author
3.5***
Donovan is a chef and award-winning essayist who has worked in a number of celebrated restaurant kitchens throughout the South. This is her memoir.
Her passion and focus has been on desserts but she knows her way around the entire kitchen. Her journey from Army brat to single mother to just-another-restaurant-worker to pastry star is interesting, and she tells her story with insight and honesty. She recalls the hard work and the discouraging way she was treated by men who didn’t value her contributions because she was a woman (and yet, were quick to give credit to their own mothers, grandmothers, and aunts who nurtured their own love of food and cooking). And she relishes in the memories of her successful endeavors and reflects on the lessons learned.
One of the more telling events in her career is outlined on the book jacket: “…she had made the perfect dessert at a celebration for food-world goddess Diana Kennedy. When Kennedy sked why she had not heard of her, Donovan said she did not know. ‘I do,’ Kennedy said. ‘Stop letting men tell your story.’” I’m so glad that she listened to that advice.
Donovan narrates the audio book version herself. I cannot imagine that anyone else could have done a better job.
3.5***
Donovan is a chef and award-winning essayist who has worked in a number of celebrated restaurant kitchens throughout the South. This is her memoir.
Her passion and focus has been on desserts but she knows her way around the entire kitchen. Her journey from Army brat to single mother to just-another-restaurant-worker to pastry star is interesting, and she tells her story with insight and honesty. She recalls the hard work and the discouraging way she was treated by men who didn’t value her contributions because she was a woman (and yet, were quick to give credit to their own mothers, grandmothers, and aunts who nurtured their own love of food and cooking). And she relishes in the memories of her successful endeavors and reflects on the lessons learned.
One of the more telling events in her career is outlined on the book jacket: “…she had made the perfect dessert at a celebration for food-world goddess Diana Kennedy. When Kennedy sked why she had not heard of her, Donovan said she did not know. ‘I do,’ Kennedy said. ‘Stop letting men tell your story.’” I’m so glad that she listened to that advice.
Donovan narrates the audio book version herself. I cannot imagine that anyone else could have done a better job.
February 11, 2021
4.5 stars!! i really enjoyed this, more full thoughts to come. also lmao it took me two months to finish an audio book... BUT i did it! YAY!
I have never really read any food writing before, so this was a new journey for me, and I absolutely loved it!! I am ready to indulge in all food memoirs now, please! Donovan's journey from waitress to talented, award-winning pastry chef was hard-fought at times, and filled with love and joy at others. Her humble beginnings and the hardship she experienced as a young woman really shape her into a strong yet empathetic and caring chef. It was beautiful to hear her tell of that transformation in herself, and see her become more self assured as she grew older and learned more. Donovan is truly a trailblazer and won't take any shit!
I loved hearing Donovan speak of her passion for pastry and baking. Her description of food—its textures, flavors—and the memories and community it created were absorbing and so inspiring. I especially love her passion for community building through food, and how that played out in her personal and professional life—forging connections within her own family and in the budding food community in Nashville.
This is an amazing book, filled with so much wisdom, grit, love, light, and of course, delicious food. Donovan is compassionate in her life and in her cooking, and I adored this book so much.
I have never really read any food writing before, so this was a new journey for me, and I absolutely loved it!! I am ready to indulge in all food memoirs now, please! Donovan's journey from waitress to talented, award-winning pastry chef was hard-fought at times, and filled with love and joy at others. Her humble beginnings and the hardship she experienced as a young woman really shape her into a strong yet empathetic and caring chef. It was beautiful to hear her tell of that transformation in herself, and see her become more self assured as she grew older and learned more. Donovan is truly a trailblazer and won't take any shit!
I loved hearing Donovan speak of her passion for pastry and baking. Her description of food—its textures, flavors—and the memories and community it created were absorbing and so inspiring. I especially love her passion for community building through food, and how that played out in her personal and professional life—forging connections within her own family and in the budding food community in Nashville.
This is an amazing book, filled with so much wisdom, grit, love, light, and of course, delicious food. Donovan is compassionate in her life and in her cooking, and I adored this book so much.
December 9, 2020
[TW: this memoir contains sexual assault, physical, and emotional abuse]
I went into this expecting a traditional food memoir structure, focused on her relationship to food and her career as a pastry chef. However, it turned out to be that and much more.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is first and foremost a love letter to the women in her life. She writes about her young daughter waiting for her in the dining room in a restaurant as Donovan toiled in the kitchen. She writes about the meals her mother made for her, largely constructed with canned and processed foods. It wasn’t about the content of the meal, but that eating her mother’s food was a moment that she and her mother were truly connected. She writes about recreating her Abuela’s tortillas decades later for a pop-up menu. There is a tenderness and melancholy that weaves through much of Donovan’s writing, making the reading experience feel extremely intimate, like a precious piece of fruit Donovan is intrusting to you to savor.
This is also Donovan’s story of her coming of age. While she does focus on the women in her life, she also is, of course, writing about herself. Donovan never planned on becoming a chef, and you follow the many steps along the way that led her to that career. She writes about her unexpected pregnancies that thrust her into motherhood, drastically altering her life’s course. She clearly loves her children deeply but isn’t afraid to write about the sacrifices she made to care for them. She also talks frankly and openly about an abusive relationship she was trapped in. Her love of food is obviously there, as she cradles cookbooks on her pregnant stomach, hungry to learn about baking techniques. However, she does not have formal culinary school training and does not end up considering the food industry as her career until her late twenties. I loved hearing about her indirect and unconventional path to the food world, and her unique perspective she brought to the industry.
If you’re looking for dirty laundry about the restaurant industry and gorgeous food writing, this book offers plenty of that, too. While just a part of the memoir, Donovan writes many mouthwatering scenes. Her style is very no-frills, focusing on great hospitality and local ingredients. While it may seem like she breezes over many of the peaks of her career, I believe she chose to focus on moments of satisfaction over external validation. She’s not afraid to talk about mistakes, and how her unwavering gumption kept her going. She spends a lot of time writing about how women are still undervalued in the food world and how capitalism and classism continue to dominate the industry, and how she ultimately chose to leave.
I think many people would love this memoir and Donovan’s voice, and I highly recommend it.
I went into this expecting a traditional food memoir structure, focused on her relationship to food and her career as a pastry chef. However, it turned out to be that and much more.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is first and foremost a love letter to the women in her life. She writes about her young daughter waiting for her in the dining room in a restaurant as Donovan toiled in the kitchen. She writes about the meals her mother made for her, largely constructed with canned and processed foods. It wasn’t about the content of the meal, but that eating her mother’s food was a moment that she and her mother were truly connected. She writes about recreating her Abuela’s tortillas decades later for a pop-up menu. There is a tenderness and melancholy that weaves through much of Donovan’s writing, making the reading experience feel extremely intimate, like a precious piece of fruit Donovan is intrusting to you to savor.
This is also Donovan’s story of her coming of age. While she does focus on the women in her life, she also is, of course, writing about herself. Donovan never planned on becoming a chef, and you follow the many steps along the way that led her to that career. She writes about her unexpected pregnancies that thrust her into motherhood, drastically altering her life’s course. She clearly loves her children deeply but isn’t afraid to write about the sacrifices she made to care for them. She also talks frankly and openly about an abusive relationship she was trapped in. Her love of food is obviously there, as she cradles cookbooks on her pregnant stomach, hungry to learn about baking techniques. However, she does not have formal culinary school training and does not end up considering the food industry as her career until her late twenties. I loved hearing about her indirect and unconventional path to the food world, and her unique perspective she brought to the industry.
If you’re looking for dirty laundry about the restaurant industry and gorgeous food writing, this book offers plenty of that, too. While just a part of the memoir, Donovan writes many mouthwatering scenes. Her style is very no-frills, focusing on great hospitality and local ingredients. While it may seem like she breezes over many of the peaks of her career, I believe she chose to focus on moments of satisfaction over external validation. She’s not afraid to talk about mistakes, and how her unwavering gumption kept her going. She spends a lot of time writing about how women are still undervalued in the food world and how capitalism and classism continue to dominate the industry, and how she ultimately chose to leave.
I think many people would love this memoir and Donovan’s voice, and I highly recommend it.
October 28, 2022
This turned out to be an unexpected source of comfort and strength during particularly stressful few weeks, and for that I am grateful. A fierce memoir about a fierce woman deciding to make her dreams come true her way. Must read for anyone who enjoys food memoirs.
Strong trigger warnings for mentions of physical abuse and abortion.
Strong trigger warnings for mentions of physical abuse and abortion.
October 5, 2020
Part food narrative, part memoir, this book weaves stories of Lisa's upbringing with her more recent past, as well as her hopes for the future. A raw, honest look into being a woman, and a mother, in a restaurant culture that was not built with her in mind.
February 16, 2021
Donovan’s story of forging her path in the male-dominated world of haute cuisine is gripping and illuminating. She’s a bit of a potty mouth, which I suppose is common in the trade? The balancing of her intensely demanding career with motherhood is inspiring. Her escape from an abusive boyfriend who fathered her first child, to meeting her husband, who the art professor of a class she toted her baby daughter to.
She’s got quite a chip on her shoulder about the power dynamics of male dominance in her industry, and the negative impact “investors” have on the business. She also spends significant time perambulating on the dysfunction of the women in her family largely incepted by a jerk and a misogynist of a maternal grandfather.
The restaurant industry fascinates me, and unnerves me for how terrible and joyful and meaningful a profession it is. These people who sacrifice and give so much and work so hard so we can have great meals, the labor of love involved. Work environments with so much of harshness and abuse.
Donavan tries to extract great meaning from her life story, and often waxes philosophical, especially at the end. But for me she doesn’t patch together a coherent “this is what it all means”, though she does seem to have found some peace and satisfaction though hard lessons learned. The effect was compelling read (read most of it on out and back plane ride to Seattle), a bit wordy at times, a bit ranty, and ultimately just a bit bereft of the wisdom and charm of the foodie memoirs I like best.
She’s got quite a chip on her shoulder about the power dynamics of male dominance in her industry, and the negative impact “investors” have on the business. She also spends significant time perambulating on the dysfunction of the women in her family largely incepted by a jerk and a misogynist of a maternal grandfather.
The restaurant industry fascinates me, and unnerves me for how terrible and joyful and meaningful a profession it is. These people who sacrifice and give so much and work so hard so we can have great meals, the labor of love involved. Work environments with so much of harshness and abuse.
Donavan tries to extract great meaning from her life story, and often waxes philosophical, especially at the end. But for me she doesn’t patch together a coherent “this is what it all means”, though she does seem to have found some peace and satisfaction though hard lessons learned. The effect was compelling read (read most of it on out and back plane ride to Seattle), a bit wordy at times, a bit ranty, and ultimately just a bit bereft of the wisdom and charm of the foodie memoirs I like best.
December 3, 2020
magical, lyrical, gritty, fierce.
I simply cannot get over this book. I had checked the e-book out on Kindle months ago, and after being completely entranced by the first chapter, it was auto-returned with a really long waitlist. I finally got my own copy, and I fell right back into how I felt when I first picked it up. Lisa is an incredibly gifted writer, and she uses hunger to write about food, whether it's physical hunger or emotional hunger. It was just brilliant. The way she writes about relationships and the very real strains and buried feelings, and numbing/aching/all-encompassing environment of poverty, and cooking and baking and the richness of singular ingredients and !!! Ahhhhh just such a rewarding reading experience
I simply cannot get over this book. I had checked the e-book out on Kindle months ago, and after being completely entranced by the first chapter, it was auto-returned with a really long waitlist. I finally got my own copy, and I fell right back into how I felt when I first picked it up. Lisa is an incredibly gifted writer, and she uses hunger to write about food, whether it's physical hunger or emotional hunger. It was just brilliant. The way she writes about relationships and the very real strains and buried feelings, and numbing/aching/all-encompassing environment of poverty, and cooking and baking and the richness of singular ingredients and !!! Ahhhhh just such a rewarding reading experience
August 30, 2020
Found out about this fantastic memoir from The Bookshop in East Nashville on IG. Donovan is a local author and, gosh, her story is triumphant, but she went through some shit to get where she is. Part foodie/chef memoir, part life story, this is one of the best memoirs I’ve read in a long time. It feels amazing to support local authors! Talent is abundant here in Music City.
November 5, 2020
This is a good book. But it seemed to take me so long to finish it.
It is interesting and written well but maybe not for me at this time.
It is interesting and written well but maybe not for me at this time.
September 9, 2021
Listened to on Chapter a Day. Didn’t find it that interesting.
September 6, 2020
A feminist rags to riches chef memoir. What’s not to like?
February 18, 2021
New favorite memoir ...
March 21, 2021
2.5 stars
TW: domestic violence and rape
I found this to be pretty underwhelming. It's kind of all over the place and I'm not sure she really knew what she wanted to say because she just says the same 3 things over and over again. 1. She works hard, this is mentioned on every single page. 2. The restaurant industry is exploitative. 3. Women are all in pain and also strong enough to overcome that pain and also interconnected by both of these things.
Personally, I hate this idea that women are a part of one big sisterhood because we've all been wronged. Just like how I am more than my uterus, I am more than what men have done to me.
The writing itself, though sometimes long-winded, was solid. She has a strong voice and a great sense of humor.
She occasionally falls into this nostalgia porn, opining that the 70s and 80s were the greatest decades for America. I've seen this a lot and it's always pretty cringey... It's great that you and your friends learned sign language to communicate with the deaf student in class, but you're also ignoring that at that point in time they had no legal right to reasonable accommodations for their deafness in that same class.
She mentions her hardcore work ethic a lot. A LOT. And she does work extremely hard and definitely deserves every accolade. For me, it was just repeated so often it came off as condescending, especially when she's saying that she got where she is entirely on her own with no help from anybody (except the dozens of friends, family, and colleagues she mentions in the book who hooked her up with jobs and homes and connections) entirely due to her grit and determination.
I will absolutely be making her buttermilk chess pie, but I will not be recommending this book to go with it.
TW: domestic violence and rape
I found this to be pretty underwhelming. It's kind of all over the place and I'm not sure she really knew what she wanted to say because she just says the same 3 things over and over again. 1. She works hard, this is mentioned on every single page. 2. The restaurant industry is exploitative. 3. Women are all in pain and also strong enough to overcome that pain and also interconnected by both of these things.
Personally, I hate this idea that women are a part of one big sisterhood because we've all been wronged. Just like how I am more than my uterus, I am more than what men have done to me.
The writing itself, though sometimes long-winded, was solid. She has a strong voice and a great sense of humor.
She occasionally falls into this nostalgia porn, opining that the 70s and 80s were the greatest decades for America. I've seen this a lot and it's always pretty cringey... It's great that you and your friends learned sign language to communicate with the deaf student in class, but you're also ignoring that at that point in time they had no legal right to reasonable accommodations for their deafness in that same class.
She mentions her hardcore work ethic a lot. A LOT. And she does work extremely hard and definitely deserves every accolade. For me, it was just repeated so often it came off as condescending, especially when she's saying that she got where she is entirely on her own with no help from anybody (except the dozens of friends, family, and colleagues she mentions in the book who hooked her up with jobs and homes and connections) entirely due to her grit and determination.
I will absolutely be making her buttermilk chess pie, but I will not be recommending this book to go with it.
December 15, 2020
One of the most gorgeous memoirs I’ve ever, well, read, yes. But I really want to say experienced, instead. Lisa Donovan takes the reader’s hand and dives with you straight into the deep end of survival and desire. Her stories are particular and specific, but also lush, fragrant, tactile, shimmering. Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is a love story to women, to family food traditions begun and sustained by women, to complicated lineages, and to the stories women learn to keep to themselves. It’s honest and generous and wise and I’m pretty sure the book itself gives off the scent of fresh masa and yeasty brioche and warm apricots.
I listened to Lisa Donovan read her book on audio, and her low vocal tones and Southern inflections were an extra layer of delight for me. In certain passages, especially near the end and nearly always when describing her daughter, her voice is so emotive and nearly breaks on words of love and longing and I was completely in tears. I look forward to also adding a paper copy to my home library for future rereading and sharing.
I listened to Lisa Donovan read her book on audio, and her low vocal tones and Southern inflections were an extra layer of delight for me. In certain passages, especially near the end and nearly always when describing her daughter, her voice is so emotive and nearly breaks on words of love and longing and I was completely in tears. I look forward to also adding a paper copy to my home library for future rereading and sharing.
November 12, 2021
There were so many moments I found myself shaking my head in agreement with Lisa Donovan. Childcare is a barrier for all women, not just those in hospitality. But as a former server, bartender, cook I can attest it’s terrible in that industry. Donovan hit it dead on. And then there’s the blatant gender discrimination endemic in restaurants. A women is often relegated to pastry in the kitchen and mostly paid less than male counterparts. I hope things are getting better, but reading this book reinforced my own experiences with toxic work environments we subject ourselves to because we are pleasers and nurturers. I worked in great kitchens like Donovan that pointed out the glaring disparities.
Mostly I loved this book for her unflinching honesty and the hard work she did to find her voice as a woman who loves her family and the world of creating food. Donovan’s sharp wit, and deft prose allowed me a front row seat to the beautiful and ugly parts of her life, and I am better for going on that journey with her.
Mostly I loved this book for her unflinching honesty and the hard work she did to find her voice as a woman who loves her family and the world of creating food. Donovan’s sharp wit, and deft prose allowed me a front row seat to the beautiful and ugly parts of her life, and I am better for going on that journey with her.
December 1, 2020
Wow what an interesting glimpse into the world of restaurant cooking by a woman who fought to find her own voice in spite of the many diversions thrown her way. Lisa Donovan had to take a number of detours before she finally arrived at her calling. However, this reader feels she is definitely a writer first and it is well demonstrated in this well-written, truthful book. She tells it like it is, the challenges she met while trying to break into a male-dominated fields, the ways woman and people of color have created their share of American Southern cuisine and how a family’s good or perhaps not so good ways can influence one’s life.
Even if you are not a “foodie” or reader of cookbooks as I am, you will enjoy this beautifully written story by this strong and inspiring woman.
Even if you are not a “foodie” or reader of cookbooks as I am, you will enjoy this beautifully written story by this strong and inspiring woman.
April 14, 2021
The trajectory of the story was a little unexpected because Donovan touches on everything from her upbringing to her abusive relationships and trauma, her children, art college, and then interwoven: her baking. The circuitous nature of the story mirrors the way she came at baking because it was sometimes all in and sometimes in the background as she struggled. Then she became a big deal.
It's raw and real definitively and she reads her memoir which felt personal. I probably wanted a bit more of her food story because when she does talk about baking and buttermilk and food memories, that was when I was most attuned.
It's raw and real definitively and she reads her memoir which felt personal. I probably wanted a bit more of her food story because when she does talk about baking and buttermilk and food memories, that was when I was most attuned.
March 26, 2021
This book wasn’t for me. Donovan is clearly a gifted writer, but this is not a book about a pastry chef. It’s a book about the life of a woman who struggled with her family’s history, an abusive relationship, and a career in a male-dominated industry - but that industry could have been tech, or engineering, or law and you’d wind up with the same book. Where was the food? Where was the story of what brought her to becoming a pastry chef? You expect at least a little talk of food in a chef’s memoir.
December 7, 2020
When I did not win this book in the Goodreads Giveaway I had entered, my cat wisely decided that I needed it as a Christmas gift. When it arrived, seeing that I was a bit behind on my 2020 Reading Challenge, I popped it open and managed to finish it in two nights around long days finishing a very large project. Had I not been in the midst of said project, this is the sort of highly readable, intriguing account that one devours in a single sitting and ponders for weeks or months afterward. Donovan's Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is a progress report and (I hope) mid-career retrospective on the author's journey in a food world that is full of viper pits, missteps, and an entrenched trifecta of sexism, greed, and ego that is a widely known secret to those in the field. To home cooks such as myself who are eagerly improving our skills, gobbling up recipes, food blogs, how-tos such as everything from Samin Nosrat's widely known Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking to less well known but practically a food bible in our house Alana Chernila's The Homemade Kitchen, none of this comes as a surprise.
Donovan's account is not a story of victimhood and I want to be particularly clear about that. Nor is it some sort of expose of the misogynistic underbelly of the food industry. Instead, it is an account of one woman's journey-in-progress as well as her own covenant with her industry that she is going to devote her considerable energies to being part of the solution:
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger won a James Beard Award. Once you've popped it open you will readily see why. If you have ever been even vaguely interested in entering the food world, going to culinary school, opening or investing in a restaurant, or even just want to be a little more discerning in the sorts of "celebrity chef" behaviors you support with your cable TV, dining out (remember that?), and cookbook purchasing discretionary income, Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is a must-read. Likewise, if you or someone you know is pondering entering the food industry, you might recommend this book to them. Better yet, gift them a copy.
So, I have sung this book's praises which are many. I do have some questions, though. First, why are there no pictures in this book? Second, when given so very much of Donovan's backstory why do we not learn of her parent's class and cultural origins until relatively late in the book? I suspect that it is to parallel the fact that perhaps Donovan herself did not learn the importance of these places, their hard lessons, and the parallel devaluing of women's work and the domestic skills and knowledge of poor women and/or women of color, as is the case with her grandparents, in particular, but it is something that perplexed me a bit. These are minor quibbles and should not in any way detract from a first-class read with really great messages of: (1) women must stop letting men claim their stories, labors and, ultimately what should be the source of their own success as the men's own, (2) shame is a crippling emotion and one's origins, experiences (good and ill), their and family's history are the roots from which your own talents may one day blossom if you are willing to do the work, (3) women need to lift each other up in all sectors and at all times, (4) the cult of celebrity chefs opening numerous restaurants to turn a tidy profit for their investors, at the cost and on the backs of their staff, is unsustainable, and (5) ambition in women is not something to be squelched or feared and should, instead, be fed. It is the author's ambition, passion, and curiosity that is referenced in this book's title. Put simply, women's professional ambition is as legitimate as male ambition and merits the same validation. Donovan is staking a claim to that validity here.
There is doubtless much more that I have not articulated in this review as well as I would have wished. That said, I will end with a short quote from the book that links the issues observed in the food world with the larger social issues with which we are grappling and at which we must make better headway. After a pivotal encounter with Diana Kennedy, Donovan realizes, "In that moment, I accepted that I would no longer allow myself to feel that my sense of womanhood and motherhood is the part of my identity as a chef that I have to undersell and downplay for fear of my professionalism being shrugged off, as it has been in the past" (p. 249). This is true in any field and much that is written here is readily transferable to other domains.
Donovan's account is not a story of victimhood and I want to be particularly clear about that. Nor is it some sort of expose of the misogynistic underbelly of the food industry. Instead, it is an account of one woman's journey-in-progress as well as her own covenant with her industry that she is going to devote her considerable energies to being part of the solution:
I decided I was done adding more noise and instead would add more good work. I see a lot of people doing the same now. That is what chefs do, we get to work. I want to talk about the food, the finding of it, the preparation of a meal, the spirit of service, and the celebration of the whole process, from picking the first vegetable for the meal to washing the last dish. And I want to be really honest as often as I can about who I think deserves to have a hand in building this world with us. Spoiler alert: it's not a bullshit millionaire who want to spend thousands of dollars a month on PR but haggles your already stellar 27 perfect food costs down to 25 percent (p. 269).
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger won a James Beard Award. Once you've popped it open you will readily see why. If you have ever been even vaguely interested in entering the food world, going to culinary school, opening or investing in a restaurant, or even just want to be a little more discerning in the sorts of "celebrity chef" behaviors you support with your cable TV, dining out (remember that?), and cookbook purchasing discretionary income, Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is a must-read. Likewise, if you or someone you know is pondering entering the food industry, you might recommend this book to them. Better yet, gift them a copy.
So, I have sung this book's praises which are many. I do have some questions, though. First, why are there no pictures in this book? Second, when given so very much of Donovan's backstory why do we not learn of her parent's class and cultural origins until relatively late in the book? I suspect that it is to parallel the fact that perhaps Donovan herself did not learn the importance of these places, their hard lessons, and the parallel devaluing of women's work and the domestic skills and knowledge of poor women and/or women of color, as is the case with her grandparents, in particular, but it is something that perplexed me a bit. These are minor quibbles and should not in any way detract from a first-class read with really great messages of: (1) women must stop letting men claim their stories, labors and, ultimately what should be the source of their own success as the men's own, (2) shame is a crippling emotion and one's origins, experiences (good and ill), their and family's history are the roots from which your own talents may one day blossom if you are willing to do the work, (3) women need to lift each other up in all sectors and at all times, (4) the cult of celebrity chefs opening numerous restaurants to turn a tidy profit for their investors, at the cost and on the backs of their staff, is unsustainable, and (5) ambition in women is not something to be squelched or feared and should, instead, be fed. It is the author's ambition, passion, and curiosity that is referenced in this book's title. Put simply, women's professional ambition is as legitimate as male ambition and merits the same validation. Donovan is staking a claim to that validity here.
There is doubtless much more that I have not articulated in this review as well as I would have wished. That said, I will end with a short quote from the book that links the issues observed in the food world with the larger social issues with which we are grappling and at which we must make better headway. After a pivotal encounter with Diana Kennedy, Donovan realizes, "In that moment, I accepted that I would no longer allow myself to feel that my sense of womanhood and motherhood is the part of my identity as a chef that I have to undersell and downplay for fear of my professionalism being shrugged off, as it has been in the past" (p. 249). This is true in any field and much that is written here is readily transferable to other domains.
April 11, 2021
This memoir from a pastry chef has a lot to say about the difficulties of being a female chef (and a female in general )and little to say about being a pastry chef (emphasis on pastry).
April 30, 2021
I liked it but a lot of whining. It's a memoir so not much of a plot but on and on. I do admire her energy and work ethic. I'd love to see a cookbook
January 19, 2021
Lisa Donovan always loved watching her grandmother cook, but didn't plan a career in cooking. After high school she was working in a restaurant as a server and began learning about the restaurant industry. She was also in an abusive relationship and ended up getting pregnant, so that temporarily derailed her college plans. Along the way Donovan finds her way through food and cooking. She works through generational trauma by cooking the food of her grandmother and Mexican ancestors. She brings together Mexican cuisine with traditional Southern cuisine and baking.
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I like Lisa Donovan and she's obviously overcome a lot to get to where she is today. But, I felt like the book was choppy and kind of all over the place. In the book jacket it talks about her struggle to succeed in the male-dominated restaurant world, but I felt like her experiences were kind of glossed over. I just felt like she focused more on the trauma she endured earlier in her life than her experiences of misogyny in the restaurant world. Parts of the book are hard to read and I personally enjoyed the second half more than the first half. I will also say her husband seems AMAZING and it's pretty miraculous that with her past she managed to marry someone like him. Overall, it was OK, but I wouldn't really recommend this one.
Some quotes I did like:
"Then I pulled seven snapper fish onto the kitchen island, sharpened my knife, remembered where I came from, the shit I had taken in my life, the wrongs I had made right time and time again, and I got back to fucking work." (p. 18)
"John and I had finally figured out a schedule that worked for our family, and throughout it all he was head over heels supportive of my work, doing the dance between our worlds so beautifully and amicably in ways I had never seen a man rise up for his woman. My aprons would be washed and folded for my next day's work, and back when I was pulling all those doubles at City House, a bowl of pasta would be kept warm on the stove waiting for me at night when I came home late. If he could carry any of the weight of how hard I was working, he did." (p. 198)
"This was at the height of hearing man after man on NPR and in The New York Times telling stories of their mothers, their grandmothers, anyone whom they felt gave them clout or a sense of humility and whom, I'm certain, they honored and cherished and wanted to shine a light on, hold up high on that pedestal. The thing is, women are revered straight into abjection, useful only as a totem of inspiration. When we go to make that work on our own, we are unable to survive in the industry the men built, the one they sell our wares within." (p. 248)
"In the midst of all this current talk of women in kitchens and women getting their time in the restaurant industry, investors still can't seem to find their way to actually funding women, but holy shit are they suckers for boys who pretend they are feminists in a very all-of-a-sudden way. It only took me walking out of my fifth meeting with potential investors in Nashville to realize the game wasn't changing. The only thing that has changed is the story men are spinning to get what they want. And bankers and investors are still lapping it up and pouring money on their projects like water on a grease fire." (p. 268)
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I like Lisa Donovan and she's obviously overcome a lot to get to where she is today. But, I felt like the book was choppy and kind of all over the place. In the book jacket it talks about her struggle to succeed in the male-dominated restaurant world, but I felt like her experiences were kind of glossed over. I just felt like she focused more on the trauma she endured earlier in her life than her experiences of misogyny in the restaurant world. Parts of the book are hard to read and I personally enjoyed the second half more than the first half. I will also say her husband seems AMAZING and it's pretty miraculous that with her past she managed to marry someone like him. Overall, it was OK, but I wouldn't really recommend this one.
Some quotes I did like:
"Then I pulled seven snapper fish onto the kitchen island, sharpened my knife, remembered where I came from, the shit I had taken in my life, the wrongs I had made right time and time again, and I got back to fucking work." (p. 18)
"John and I had finally figured out a schedule that worked for our family, and throughout it all he was head over heels supportive of my work, doing the dance between our worlds so beautifully and amicably in ways I had never seen a man rise up for his woman. My aprons would be washed and folded for my next day's work, and back when I was pulling all those doubles at City House, a bowl of pasta would be kept warm on the stove waiting for me at night when I came home late. If he could carry any of the weight of how hard I was working, he did." (p. 198)
"This was at the height of hearing man after man on NPR and in The New York Times telling stories of their mothers, their grandmothers, anyone whom they felt gave them clout or a sense of humility and whom, I'm certain, they honored and cherished and wanted to shine a light on, hold up high on that pedestal. The thing is, women are revered straight into abjection, useful only as a totem of inspiration. When we go to make that work on our own, we are unable to survive in the industry the men built, the one they sell our wares within." (p. 248)
"In the midst of all this current talk of women in kitchens and women getting their time in the restaurant industry, investors still can't seem to find their way to actually funding women, but holy shit are they suckers for boys who pretend they are feminists in a very all-of-a-sudden way. It only took me walking out of my fifth meeting with potential investors in Nashville to realize the game wasn't changing. The only thing that has changed is the story men are spinning to get what they want. And bankers and investors are still lapping it up and pouring money on their projects like water on a grease fire." (p. 268)
January 9, 2021
not gonna lie, it was really difficult to get through this, especially the first 20-30% of the book. ive found that i pick up chef memoirs primarily for the cooking + restaurant parts, not so much the childhood stories (this was the issue with burn the place), esp if i don't know anything about the author (like here with lisa). for the last 70% i went straight through the book, but with the first 30% i had to listen about 10 different times to different parts i'd missed bc i fell asleep (it was an audiobook). but it was a really interesting contrast to david chang's memoir, which was the last one i read. his read more like a "here is my side of the story to all the stuff that's been said about me and what i've done in the restaurant industry" feel, it centered his identity around being a chef. it was a little mechanic and not very personal or introspective, like marketing material almost. lisa's was the complete opposite. it felt like i was reading the memoir of a writer, about her family life, struggles as a woman, and issues in the workplace that just happened to be in restaurants. it was a very holistic view of her life, and felt like a memoir memoir. her writing is wonderful. and her voice + POV was very strong throughout. she also came across as very strong (in a good way) - as one goodreads reviewer said, "It is the story of a woman who fought to find her own voice and forge the life she wanted and the life she knows she deserves, in spite of all the ways our culture conspires to make women small and suppress our voices." it was quite satisfying to follow her on this journey to "success," both personal and professional, especially seeing her overcome the obstacles. and again, sharp contrast to david chang's book, which mentioned #metoo and his lack of awareness of any of the sexism in the industry and subsequent mini reflection, i had said i wanted to hear more, and lisa gave me that. but i guess that's also where my critique comes in: the last 20% (maybe more?) was a very in your face feminist... block of musings? about being women? and surviving in the world? which felt a little preachy/lecturey and was a little too much for me personally. i get it and it made sense in the context of her life and her learnings and her experience, and i think it was powerful and important for her to get out in the world. but i guess at this point im a little jaded from hearing these same words and sentiments. and also, the stuff about her kids - i guess not having been a mother, or feeling even near ready / not having a propensity to motherhood - felt a bit much/repetitive for me. random interesting thing i didnt expect, was that both david chang and lisa had a sizeable section talking about the moment they heard about anthony bourdain's passing, and also the immense impact it had on them. im not sure why i was surprised, i guess it just speaks to his influence in the industry, and his generous character.
December 6, 2020
My world of feminism has always been all about delaying having children because it is considered a setback and distraction. Lisa’s story is so beautiful that the children and nourishment are what gave her strength and courage to fight for a better world. There is a kind of resilience that is soft and beautiful. I am deeply touched. And jealous of what Nashville sounded like before it became upcoming and hip. Hospitality and generosity — above all — has nothing to do really with the material gifts, but a kind of unrequited giving of oneself and anticipating other’s needs before they even know they needed it.
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