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A review by liralen
The Language of Baklava: A Memoir by Diana Abu-Jaber
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.