Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad
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What do we learn from eating? About ourselves? Others? In this unique memoir, Doris Friedensohn takes eating as an occasion for inquiry. Munching on quesadillas and kimchi in her suburban New Jersey neighborhood, she reflects on the meanings of cultural inclusion and what it means to our diverse nation. Enjoying couscous in Tunisia and khatchapuri (cheese bread) in the Republic of Georgia, she explores the ways strangers maintain their differences and come together. Friedensohn's subjects range from Thanksgiving at a Middle Eastern restaurant to fried grasshoppers in Oaxaca. Her wry dramas of the dining room, restaurant, market, and kitchen ripple with geopolitical, economic, psychological, and spiritual tensions. Eating as I Go is Friedensohn's distinctive combination of memoir, traveler's tale, and cultural commentary. Library Journal In an engaging series of memoir essays, Friedensohn (emeritus, women's studies/American studies, New Jersey City Univ.) shares with us her lifelong quest for new cultures, foods, and tastes. The cornucopia of the world's foods has excited and challenged her for the last 50 years. Her emphasis here is on ethnic foods, food markets, and entire neighborhoods where "American food" is foreign food. Today, many of us can travel to taste the world's foods without leaving town, but Friedensohn is not content to limit her essays to the United States; she also includes her food experiences in Tunisia, Austria, Mozambique, the Republic of Georgia, Nepal, and Mexico, to name just a few of the countries where she discovered the pleasures of strange foods and how they could bring people from different cultures together. Luckily, Friedensohn's sharp insights avoid academic pretension. Instead, her collection reveals the soul of an insightful and sympathetic woman, examining the relationship between culture and food. Recommended for American culture, travel, and food collections in large public and academic libraries.-Olga B. Wise, Austin, TX Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
