Love, Loss, and What We Ate
2016 memoir
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Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir written by American television host Padma Lakshmi, published in 2016, was originally intended as a "book about healthy eating," but ended up being about a candid examination of being abandoned by her father, childhood sexual abuse, her youth in Chennai, harassment she suffered as a young immigrant to the United States, the motor-vehicle collision she survived at age 14 that left her scarred, her years-long battle with endometriosis, her marriage to writer Salman Rushdie, and the pregnancy that yielded her daughter.[1][2] The title nods to a 1995 memoir by Ilene Beckerman, Love, Loss and What I Wore, which Lakshmi's friend Nora Ephron had later adapted into a stage play.[3][4] Lakshmi had previously written two cookbooks, Easy Exotic and Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet.[3]
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| |
| Author | Padma Lakshmi |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Food memoir |
| Published | 2016 |
| Publisher | ECCO |
| ISBN | 9780062202611 |
| OCLC | 911191142 |
| Dewey Decimal | 791.4502 |
| LC Class | PN1992.4.L29 A3 2016 |
Reception
Glamour magazine recommended it as a "memoir-cookbook places you at Lakshmi's table with her brave mother and brilliant grandfather, and you feel nourished in every way."[5] Newsweek Global commented that the recipes include the "chili cheese toast of her childhood, the kumquat chutney she made in bulk after her marriage to Rushdie disintegrated, the egg-in-a-hole she ate just before going into labor. It's inconsistent as a cookbook, but the dishes should be read more as a refrain for the memoir's theme: It's not lost on Lakshmi that she has food to thank for her success."[2] Food & Wine recommended it as an "object of obsession" in a 2016 issue.[6]
Critical analysis
Lakshmi's book has been described as using "foodwork...as a form of 'consumable heritage' that can imbue the diasporic food writer with visibility and agency...Lakshmi's writing also contextualizes cooking as a means of fortifying cultural and familial bonds and of constructing her identity rather than associating it with feminine passivity and subordination."[7]