Scan barcode
mkrowley's review against another edition
4.0
This was pretty good. I read it for my Read Around the World challenge for Jordan. It includes multiple recipes. I really enjoyed the writing, and found that I was able to relate to a lot of the author’s stories despite our very different circumstances. Very universal themes of wanting to find your identity while growing up, of conflict within family, longing for a home you’ve left.
heathernj9's review against another edition
3.0
This book made me drool the entire time I read it. :) Not only is it filled with great stories from her childhood and adulthood, but it is also full of delicious recipes I am dying to try. A great perspective on growing up part of two different cultures. Plus she grew up in Syracuse, near to where I grew up!
jess_segraves's review against another edition
5.0
Abu-Jaber's memoir is like velvet with its descriptions; the way she writes is (not to be cliche) captivating. You feel yourself transported to different times, different locations, and different emotions. In my mind I can imagine the people she grew up with, the experiences she had, and the people she encountered.
A good book transports you to a different time and place.
The recipes in here sound delicious, like better versions of some of the heavy Egyptian fare I had while abroad.
A good book transports you to a different time and place.
The recipes in here sound delicious, like better versions of some of the heavy Egyptian fare I had while abroad.
liralen's review against another edition
4.0
Abu-Jaber was a dual-culture child: with an American mother and a Jordanian father, she spent most of her childhood in upstate New York but a two-year (relatively brief, but formative) period in Jordan. She portrays her father as a larger-than-life character, eagerly embracing much of what the States had to offer while also hanging steadfastly to certain cultural norms.
This is not the sort of book with a tidy start point and end point, or one about a definable thing that happens. Rather, it is a coming-of-age memoir about food and family and living between cultures. Just as children pick up languages more easily than adults, Abu-Jaber found it easier to navigate between cultures as a child—to slough off one and pick up the other as a child. As she got older, of course, she had to find more complex ways to manage her identity. I retain vivid impressions [of Jordan] worked into my body, she says, sharp and inexorable—the whiteness of the streets, the stone houses, the running children. These tokens have always been within me: the scent of mint in my parents' garden, the intricate birdsong, the seeded crust of the bread, and the taste of dried yogurt steeped in olive oil. All of it returns in my dreams. But when I deliberately try to reimagine it, it turns to dust (135–136).
Abu-Jaber's mother is more of an enigma here than her father. Her father (and his extended family) bursts with energy and emotion, cooking up a storm and concocting one scheme after another. Her mother has it harder, perhaps: thrust into a culture that she did not plan to be part of, on the sidelines while her children adapt with ease. (There's a scene where she makes pancakes in Jordan—the neighbours end up referring to them as 'burnt American flat food' (38). Sadder, though, is the child of diplomats whose parents have taught him to shun/scorn the locals.) But then, despite her comfort with staying in one place, perhaps Abu-Jaber's mother is better equipped for uncertainty and change: This is the way she holds to things, lightly, knowing to let such stuff pass on and through. Neither Bud nor I can do this. We seize up, our insides tightening fiercely around our desires.... Better not to have dreams at all, I think in a surge of bitterness, than to feel this way. Better not to know what could have been (176).
Anyway. So it goes. Wide-ranging and thoughtful and full of lush descriptions of food. Lots of searching for answers to questions that can't quite be defined.
This is not the sort of book with a tidy start point and end point, or one about a definable thing that happens. Rather, it is a coming-of-age memoir about food and family and living between cultures. Just as children pick up languages more easily than adults, Abu-Jaber found it easier to navigate between cultures as a child—to slough off one and pick up the other as a child. As she got older, of course, she had to find more complex ways to manage her identity. I retain vivid impressions [of Jordan] worked into my body, she says, sharp and inexorable—the whiteness of the streets, the stone houses, the running children. These tokens have always been within me: the scent of mint in my parents' garden, the intricate birdsong, the seeded crust of the bread, and the taste of dried yogurt steeped in olive oil. All of it returns in my dreams. But when I deliberately try to reimagine it, it turns to dust (135–136).
Abu-Jaber's mother is more of an enigma here than her father. Her father (and his extended family) bursts with energy and emotion, cooking up a storm and concocting one scheme after another. Her mother has it harder, perhaps: thrust into a culture that she did not plan to be part of, on the sidelines while her children adapt with ease. (There's a scene where she makes pancakes in Jordan—the neighbours end up referring to them as 'burnt American flat food' (38). Sadder, though, is the child of diplomats whose parents have taught him to shun/scorn the locals.) But then, despite her comfort with staying in one place, perhaps Abu-Jaber's mother is better equipped for uncertainty and change: This is the way she holds to things, lightly, knowing to let such stuff pass on and through. Neither Bud nor I can do this. We seize up, our insides tightening fiercely around our desires.... Better not to have dreams at all, I think in a surge of bitterness, than to feel this way. Better not to know what could have been (176).
Anyway. So it goes. Wide-ranging and thoughtful and full of lush descriptions of food. Lots of searching for answers to questions that can't quite be defined.
littlesprite21's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
dujyt's review against another edition
3.0
I found myself easily caught up in the narrative voice and language of the author's Arab-American heritage. Using the actual recipes of ethnic foods to add meaning (and flavor) to family anecdotes works for the most part, but sometimes it felt like an unnecessary stylistic distraction.
If you're a foodie and like to read lists of spices and exotic preparation techniques, you'll enjoy this book.
If you're a foodie and like to read lists of spices and exotic preparation techniques, you'll enjoy this book.
anachronistique's review against another edition
4.0
Lyrical writing and both affectionate and clear-eyed in its remembrances. Will have to try the recipes soon. I do wish Abu-Jaber had spoken more about her mother, but I understand that wasn't the focus of the story she was telling - that her relationship with her father and their relationship with Jordan is the real central thread.