Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes
Author: Leslie Li
Now in paperback, the powerful, touching memoir of a Chinese-American woman, in which taste becomes the keeper of memory and food the keeper of culture when Nai-nai, her extraordinary grandmother, arrives from mainland China.
Author Biography: Leslie Li is the author of Bittersweet: A Novel and coauthor of Enter the Dragon, a book of children's plays based on Chinese folktales. She has written for various publications, including the New York Times, Gourmet, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure. She divides her time between New York City and Vermont.
Publishers Weekly
Like an amuse bouche, each vignette in Li's memoir tantalizes with a taste of Li's life as a Chinese-American in suburban New York, leaving readers longing for more delicious tidbits. Li chronicles incidents in her life from her 1950s childhood to her grandmother Nai-Nai's centenary in Guilin, China, in the 1980s. The essays lyrically show the tension in Li's family between her father and mother, between herself and her father, and most of all, between Li's American ways and her Chinese history. Li uses the food of her family to tell her stories: "At a Chinese table," she writes, "it's the unspoken words that count. The meal is the message." A silent meal with her Chinese-born father speaks more of the disintegration of her parents' marriage than explication could. She writes, "I... didn't want him to have to eat alone, not when my parents' marriage was dissolving, like the pierced egg yolk seeping and disappearing into his noodles." The prose comes most alive when Li focuses on Nai-Nai, who lived with the author's family for 15 years when Li was young. Leaping decades ahead, Li returns to China to visit her senile grandmother, and she begins to try to reconstruct Nai-Nai's life. The focus shifts as Li begins writing her novel, Bittersweet, and she includes some of her conjecture about the years her grandmother spent in the U.S. While readers may wish for yet more stories of Nai-Nai and of Li herself, the book is more than satisfying, and the mythical ending (Li recounts a fable of her own) is haunting. Agent, Joanne Wang. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A Chinese-American daughter recalls the kitchen and its chores as a safe haven from the tensions within a family trying to assimilate while maintaining traditional values. It's not news that ethnic cooking forges a vital link to one's cultural heritage in the turmoil of the American melting pot. But Li (Bittersweet: A Novel, 1992), whose paternal grandfather was the first elected president of Nationalist China, conveys surprising depth of feeling in her description of food's impact on her upbringing. Though she begins with a somewhat self-absorbed series of girlhood recollections, the narrative quickly picks up steam with the arrival from China of her grandmother to put at least the culinary side of the house in order. Watching the aging Nai-nai sharpen her cleaver "with the single-mindedness of an axe murderer" on the flagstone porch of their suburban north Bronx home or dodging traffic to access the vegetable garden she has installed on the median of a nearby expressway, the author begins to plumb the relationship of food preparation to the integrity of a Chinese household. Knowledge is imparted with every meal. The painstaking shaping and even tinting of New Year's holiday bread to resemble a peach, for example, evokes that fruit's connotation of longevity, although the fiercely pragmatic Nai-nai suggests that eating the peach itself would probably be better for the teeth. Authentic recipes from Nai-nai and others appear at the end of most chapters. Some seem at first starkly minimalist, but American cooks who think they know their way around a wok may find themselves realizing they've never tried it exactly that way. (One surprisingly recurrent ingredient: brown sugar.) It's anunusual format, but the author artfully blends episodes of gastronomic education with often poignant recollections of a stern father who could never quite bridge the cultural divide between himself and an essentially American daughter. An engaging family portrait enriched by an insider's view of the Chinese kitchen. First printing of 30,000
Interesting book: Contabilidad Financiera
Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America
Author: Steve Almond
Perhaps you remember The Marathon, Oompahs, Bit-O-Choc, or Kit Kat Dark. Where did they go? Driven by his obsession, stubborn idealism, and the promise of free candy, self-confessed candyfreak Steve Almond takes off on a quest to discover candy's origins in America, to explore little companies that continue to get by on pluck and perseverance, and to witness the glorious excess of candy manufacturing. Part candy porn, part candy polemic, part social history, part confession, Candyfreak explores the role candy plays in our lives as both source of pleasure and escape from pain. By turns ecstatic, comic, and bittersweet, Candyfreak is the story of how Steve Almond grew up on candy---and how, for better and worse, candy has grown up too.
The New York Times - Kate Ja.cobs
…p; for the most part, Almond goes at the subject as if he were a giddy 5-year-old, creating an entertaining book full of repeatable tidbits about the candy industry.
Publishers Weekly
The appropriately named Almond goes beyond candy obsession to enter the realm of "freakdom." Right up front, he divulges that he has eaten a piece of candy "every single day of his entire life," "thinks about candy at least once an hour" and "has between three and seven pounds of candy in his house at all times." Indeed, Almond's fascination is no mere hobby-it's taken over his life. And what's a Boston College creative writing teacher to do when he can't get M&Ms, Clark Bars and Bottle Caps off his mind? Write a book on candy, of course. Almond's tribute falls somewhere between Hilary Liftin's decidedly personal Candy and Me and Tim Richardson's almost scholarly Sweets: A History of Candy. There are enough anecdotes from Almond's lifelong fixation that readers will feel as if they know him (about halfway through the book, when Almond is visiting a factory and a marketing director offers him a taste of a coconut treat, readers will know why he tells her, "I'm really kind of full"-he hates coconut). But there are also enough facts to draw readers' attention away from the unnaturally fanatical Almond and onto the subject at hand. Almond isn't interested in "The Big Three" (Nestle, Hershey's and Mars). Instead, he checks out "the little guys," visiting the roasters at Goldenberg's Peanut Chews headquarters and hanging out with a "chocolate engineer" at a gourmet chocolate lab in Vermont. Almond's awareness of how strange he is-the man actually buys "seconds" of certain candies and refers to the popular chocolate mint parfait as "the Andes oeuvre"-is strangely endearing. (Apr. 9) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Lynn Evarts - VOYA
Almond is obsessed with candy. He claims that not one day of his life has passed when he has not had a candy bar. He takes his obsession on the road and details for readers his travels to small candy factories around the country, encouraging others to engage in his candy feast. He visits the home of the Idaho Spud, the Goo Goo Cluster, Valomilk, and the five Star Bars. On his way, he entertains readers with candy trivia and his longing for Caravelle candy bars. Peeps, Chuckles, Jordan Almonds, and Circus Peanuts are included in his list of MWMs (mistakes were made), products that never should have been candies in the first place. Almond's sense of humor and his encyclopedic knowledge of candy makes this book an enjoyable trip across the chocolate-covered countryside. He is fanatical in his interest, and he quickly pulls readers into his obsession, making a trip to the candy counter a necessary result of reading. Young adults will feel his passion and most likely will begin searching for the elusive Violet Crumble and Twin Bings. Although not for everyone, this book will touch teens who appreciate the eccentric, and they will love Almond and his candy crusade. VOYA Codes 4Q 2P S A/YA (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed book recommended for Young Adults). 2004, Algonquin, 280p., Ages 15 to Adult.
Library Journal
A former journalist, Almond (creative writing, Boston Coll.; My Life in Heavy Metal) is obsessed with candy; it shaped his childhood and continues to define his life in ways large and small. Fascinated by the emotional bonds that people develop with their childhood favorites, Almond began a journey into the history of candy in America and discovered a lot about himself in the process. Once hundreds of American confectioners delivered regional favorites to consumers, but now the big three of candy-Hershey, Mars, and Nestl -control the market. To find out what happened to those candies of yesteryear, Almond talks to candy collectors and historians and visits a few of the remaining independent candy companies, where he learns exactly what goes into creating lesser-known treats such as the Idaho Spud. Flavored with the author's amusingly tart sense of humor, Candyfreak is an intriguing chronicle of the passions that candy inspires and the pleasures it offers. Recommended for most public libraries as a nice counterpart to Tim Richardson's more internationally focused Sweets: A History of Candy.-John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Almond, a self-diagnosed "candyfreak," details with mouthwatering descriptions his visits to the minor league of candy makers who continue to churn out their distinctive products. Claiming to have eaten at least a piece of candy every day of his life, Almond first establishes his candy credentials. He always has at least three to seven pounds of candy in his home; he's stashed 14 boxes of Kit Kat Limited Edition Dark in a warehouse; he has further supplies in drawers in case of an emergency; and at Halloween his haul was between 10 and 15 pounds. But mourning the disappearance of so many independent candy makers-a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was once known as Confectioner's Row-and his own favorite bar, the Caravelle, he decides to find out what happened, and what makers still remain. The search, serendipitously fueled by boxes of free samples, leads him to factories in such places as Dorchester, Massachusetts (Necco wafers and candy hearts); Burlington, Vermont (the Five Star Bar); and Sioux City, Iowa, where he watches The Bing, a regional favorite, being made. At each factory he witnesses every step of the process, and always gets to sample the product. He also meets Steve Traino, a fellow candyfreak who has tapped into the nostalgia candy market by buying and then selling discontinued items online, and Ray Broekel, the industry's historian, who has a vast collection of candy memorabilia, from wrappers to advertising. Almond is impressed with these independent manufacturers, always generous and dedicated, but also realistic about their limitations, both in distribution and longevity. All are up against the Big Three-Mars, Hershey, and Nestle-who have the money and the muscle tokeep the little guys out of the big stores, as well as to steal their ideas: facts that inevitably sour this otherwise delicious celebration of all things sweet. Sweet, never sickly-and quite informative.
Table of Contents:
| Prologue : some things you should know about the author | 1 | |
| The author will now rationalize | 9 | |
| Chocolate = enabler | 17 | |
| In which an unhealthy pattern of dependence is established | 18 | |
| An ill-advised discussion of freak economics | 24 | |
| Night of the living freak | 30 | |
| Mistakes were made | 33 | |
| Caravelle : an elegy | 38 | |
| I [love] Manny | 48 | |
| Feeding the beast | 54 | |
| A top-secret chocolate situation | 61 | |
| The politics of the rack | 66 | |
| The last man in America with Black Jack gum | 72 | |
| The Capo Di Tutti freak | 81 | |
| The love song of Ray Luthar Broekel | 86 | |
| Welcome to the boom | 92 | |
| There are men upon this earth who tread like gods | 100 | |
| Feuilletine, revealed | 107 | |
| Freak fetish | 115 | |
| The official dark horse freak of Philadelphia | 118 | |
| Wee Willie and the Pop-a-Licks rage | 125 | |
| Southern-fried freak | 133 | |
| Chocolate haiku | 140 | |
| Freak retentive | 149 | |
| In the belly of the freak | 152 | |
| The unstoppable freak energy of Mr. Marty Palmer | 155 | |
| Southbound with the hammers down | 173 | |
| The candy bar on your chin | 178 | |
| The marshmallow parallax | 188 | |
| A depressing but necessary digression | 199 | |
| Boise : gateway to... Boise | 201 | |
| Ladies and gentlemen, the Idaho Spud | 205 | |
| Huckleberry, hounded | 216 | |
| American lunch | 224 | |
| How will the Spud survive? | 228 | |
| The past is just ahead | 234 | |
| Remember this name : Banana-Zaba | 241 | |
| A second depressing but necessary digression | 248 | |
| A little hidden bomb in my Idaho Spud | 250 | |
| A few final relevant facts | 254 | |
| Acknowledgments | 263 | |
| Freak appendix | 265 |
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