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Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family by Louise DeSalvo
jess_mango's review
3.0
DeSalvo's gritty memoir is full of lots of unhappy memories of growing up as a 2nd generation American in an Italian American home in New Jersey. This is not a happy go-lucky foodie memoir. DeSalvo digs up a lot of pain in her family history.
bparkinson31's review
emotional
reflective
4.0
Sometimes difficult to follow - chapters and paragraphs jump from her mother to her father to her father's father to her mother's stepmother's sister to her maternal grandmother's grandfather's other family's cousin.
It's interesting that DeSalvo frequently remarks that her mother couldn't feed her. When her mother always had food on the table, unlike her grandparents, who starved in Southern Italy. But DeSalvo was too good for store-bought bread and canned ravioli. That perspective was off-putting.
There is no timeline in the book - it's back and forth and back and forth. And I liked that. It worked. It's how life feels - a jumbling reflection of what happened before with what happened later strung together a dreamlike sequencing.
I like her. I like her and her writing a lot.
It's interesting that DeSalvo frequently remarks that her mother couldn't feed her. When her mother always had food on the table, unlike her grandparents, who starved in Southern Italy. But DeSalvo was too good for store-bought bread and canned ravioli. That perspective was off-putting.
There is no timeline in the book - it's back and forth and back and forth. And I liked that. It worked. It's how life feels - a jumbling reflection of what happened before with what happened later strung together a dreamlike sequencing.
I like her. I like her and her writing a lot.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Death of parent, Alcoholism, Death, and Classism
beatniksafari's review
Louise DeSalvo writes about her complex relationships with food and family in “Crazy in the Kitchen.” At first glance, the book’s description: growing up Italian-American in New Jersey, appealed to me since it seemed to fit my own life. But her background is Southern Italy, North Jersey, while I’m the opposite. I’m also about thirty years younger than DeSalvo. Those factors, and a number of others, create a significant difference in our life stories. DeSalvo grew up with a depressed mom, an abusive father, a dysfunctional extended family always in conflict with one another. They came from the poorest parts of Italy where they lived desolate lives of hunger and oppression as peasant workers. Their stories parallel those I have read of sharecroppers in the American South, held down by unfair laws and by the greed of affluent landowners who cared more about their own profits than the welfare of their employees.
DeSalvo’s family members carried their despair and their rage into their new country, where they expressed it both internally and externally. Her story is a far distance from the typical ones of abundance and exuberance associated with Italy and Italian Americans. No fat nonnas bestowing kisses on their grandchildren while stirring giant pots of red sauce in DeSalvo’s kitchen. There was a grandmother, but she was neither fat nor affectionate, though she did love DeSalvo with a fierce sort of protectiveness. No doting mother plying her children with delectable treats, either. DeSalvo’s mother cooked poorly, and relied mostly on convenience foods to feed her family. DeSalvo grew into an adult with a passion for Italy and for fine food, a surprise considering her childhood deprived of both physical and psychological nourishment. The latter parts of the book, where DeSalvo makes peace with her family and her upbringing, resonated most with me.
DeSalvo’s family members carried their despair and their rage into their new country, where they expressed it both internally and externally. Her story is a far distance from the typical ones of abundance and exuberance associated with Italy and Italian Americans. No fat nonnas bestowing kisses on their grandchildren while stirring giant pots of red sauce in DeSalvo’s kitchen. There was a grandmother, but she was neither fat nor affectionate, though she did love DeSalvo with a fierce sort of protectiveness. No doting mother plying her children with delectable treats, either. DeSalvo’s mother cooked poorly, and relied mostly on convenience foods to feed her family. DeSalvo grew into an adult with a passion for Italy and for fine food, a surprise considering her childhood deprived of both physical and psychological nourishment. The latter parts of the book, where DeSalvo makes peace with her family and her upbringing, resonated most with me.
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