Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers (Hardcover)
Staff Reviews
Family, places, smells, and tastes conjure memories and make certain foods comfort foods. Everyone has their own personal story to relate regarding the foods they love best. Natalie Eve Garrett has compiled a delicious array of essays from writers around the world. Among the essays you’ll find Diane Abu-Jaber writing about za'atar, Lev Grossman serving up his divorce-inspired General Tso's Tofu, and Kristen Iskandrian celebrating her Grief Pickles. This book will inspire your own stories of the foods that comfort you, and it may add some new comfort foods to your repertoire. Plus it has recipes! -Greg
November 2019 Indie Next List
“The visceral quality of food as it relates to memory is unparalleled—sometimes we eat our favorite foods as comfort during grief, or a dish prepared by a friend becomes healing food from then on. Eat Joy is a lively collection of autobiographical stories in which food plays a starring role (recipes included—and they are lovely!). A diverse selection of celebrated authors tell their stories of growth, loss, healing, and homecoming, and the resulting collection is nothing short of magical.”
— Mary Wahlmeier, Raven Book Store, Lawrence, KS
Description
"Eat Joy is the most lovely food essay book... This is the perfect gift." --Joy Wilson (Joy the Baker)
Named a Best Cookbook of the Year by Martha Stewart Living
"Magnificent illustrations add spirit to recipes and heartfelt narratives. Plan to buy two copies--one for you and one for your best foodie friend." --Taste of Home
This collection of intimate, illustrated essays by some of America's most well-regarded literary writers explores how comfort food can help us cope with dark times--be it the loss of a parent, the loneliness of a move, or the pain of heartache.
Lev Grossman explains how he survived on "sweet, sour, spicy, salty, unabashedly gluey" General Tso's tofu after his divorce. Carmen Maria Machado describes her growing pains as she learned to feed and care for herself during her twenties. Claire Messud tries to understand how her mother gave up dreams of being a lawyer to make "a dressed salad of tiny shrimp and avocado, followed by prune-stuffed pork tenderloin." What makes each tale so moving is not only the deeply personal revelations from celebrated writers, but also the compassion and healing behind the story: the taste of hope.
"If you've ever felt a deep, emotional connection to a recipe or been comforted by food during a dark time, you'll fall in love with these stories."--Martha Stewart Living
About the Author
NATALIE EVE GARRETT is an artist and writer, and the editor of The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook: A Collection of Stories with Recipes and the forthcoming Lonely Stories: 20 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Perils of Being Alone. She lives in a town outside Washington, D.C., and along the Potomac River with her husband and two children. MERYL ROWIN is an illustrator whose work has been commissioned by The New York Times, Lenny Letter, the Glamour Woman of the Year Awards, Travel + Leisure, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Apartment Therapy. She lives in Los Angeles and previously worked on Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally's memoir, The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.
