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rachelmanija Dec. 17th, 2022 10:45 am)
rachelmanija Dec. 17th, 2022 10:45 am)I first saw Kwame Onwuachi on Top Chef and thought he seemed interesting, which is why I wanted to read his book. Having now read his memoir, he's so much more interesting than I realized.
He grew up splitting his time between an abusive father and a mother in the catering/restaurant business. At age ten, he was sent to Nigeria to live with his grandfather for a while. When he returned to America, he got thrown out of private schools (basically for trauma-related acting-out while Black), got involved in a gang, went to college and got kicked out for dealing drugs, had a life-changing experience as a cook on an oil boat, decided to become a chef, hustled candy on subways to pay to attend the CIA, worked at some of the top restaurants in America, and ran headfirst into a glass ceiling of racism over what Black chefs are and aren't expected to cook.
So this guy had a sufficiently interesting life before he turned thirty that he decided to write a memoir, an experience with which I can identify. It's vividly written and compelling - my favorite part was the oil boat experience - and also raw and upsetting at times. A lot of his restaurant experiences made me want to punch someone, and that's not even getting into the prejudice and complete lack of opportunity that stalled out the lives of a lot of his friends. I really appreciated his point that we should not put up with levels of abuse in the kitchen that we wouldn't accept in other workplaces. (I have personal experience with parallel issues in Hollywood.)
The first two-thirds of the book were more interesting to me than the last third, which deals with the failure of a fine dining restaurant he opened that was soon closed. One of his backers absolutely sounds like a racist asshole and there were a lot of factors out of his control working against him, but overall it felt like he needed a little more distance from the events - something that the earlier parts benefited from - to make it as solid a piece of writing as the rest of the book.
In addition to everything you want in a chef memoir (food porn and kitchen details), this memoir is a very well-written exploration of persona and identity, which he links to the experience not only of the multiple cultures he's from, but of the experience of being a person of color in America. He's very conscious of his own story and various personas, how he chooses between them, how people relate to them, and how he can present and fine-tune them to get opportunities. It's a fascinating topic and not one I often see explored in memoir, probably because it's basically inviting people to call you insincere and manipulative. Many if not all of us do that to some degree or another, but it's really taboo to admit to it.
Content notes: Physical abuse by a parent, violence, drugs, animal slaughter for food, vivid depictions of racism and toxic workplaces.
This memoir includes a recipe after every chapter. I haven't tried any yet but I have my eye on the shrimp etoufee. The audio version read by the author is also excellent, and includes the recipes in a pdf.
A gift fromlandingtree - thank you so much!
He grew up splitting his time between an abusive father and a mother in the catering/restaurant business. At age ten, he was sent to Nigeria to live with his grandfather for a while. When he returned to America, he got thrown out of private schools (basically for trauma-related acting-out while Black), got involved in a gang, went to college and got kicked out for dealing drugs, had a life-changing experience as a cook on an oil boat, decided to become a chef, hustled candy on subways to pay to attend the CIA, worked at some of the top restaurants in America, and ran headfirst into a glass ceiling of racism over what Black chefs are and aren't expected to cook.
So this guy had a sufficiently interesting life before he turned thirty that he decided to write a memoir, an experience with which I can identify. It's vividly written and compelling - my favorite part was the oil boat experience - and also raw and upsetting at times. A lot of his restaurant experiences made me want to punch someone, and that's not even getting into the prejudice and complete lack of opportunity that stalled out the lives of a lot of his friends. I really appreciated his point that we should not put up with levels of abuse in the kitchen that we wouldn't accept in other workplaces. (I have personal experience with parallel issues in Hollywood.)
The first two-thirds of the book were more interesting to me than the last third, which deals with the failure of a fine dining restaurant he opened that was soon closed. One of his backers absolutely sounds like a racist asshole and there were a lot of factors out of his control working against him, but overall it felt like he needed a little more distance from the events - something that the earlier parts benefited from - to make it as solid a piece of writing as the rest of the book.
In addition to everything you want in a chef memoir (food porn and kitchen details), this memoir is a very well-written exploration of persona and identity, which he links to the experience not only of the multiple cultures he's from, but of the experience of being a person of color in America. He's very conscious of his own story and various personas, how he chooses between them, how people relate to them, and how he can present and fine-tune them to get opportunities. It's a fascinating topic and not one I often see explored in memoir, probably because it's basically inviting people to call you insincere and manipulative. Many if not all of us do that to some degree or another, but it's really taboo to admit to it.
Content notes: Physical abuse by a parent, violence, drugs, animal slaughter for food, vivid depictions of racism and toxic workplaces.
This memoir includes a recipe after every chapter. I haven't tried any yet but I have my eye on the shrimp etoufee. The audio version read by the author is also excellent, and includes the recipes in a pdf.
A gift from
landingtree - thank you so much!
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Many if not all of us do that to some degree or another, but it's really taboo to admit to it.
This is something which has confused me about US culture my whole life. Not code-switching and other methods of fitting persona to situation, but that it's considered dishonest rather than necessary.
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I agree, it's very weird that it's often socially necessary to code-switch or otherwise consciously present one facet of yourself, but you're not supposed to talk about it.
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