All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer

By:

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis
A &“lovely&” memoir of caring for a mother with cancer, reflecting on our appetites for food and for life (Minneapolis Star Tribune). When her mother is diagnosed with a rare cancer, Karen Babine—cook, collector of vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt—can&’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits to preparing her mother anything she will eat, a vegetarian diving into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast. In this series of mini-essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. As she notes that her sister&’s unborn baby is the size of lemon while her mother&’s tumor is the size of a cabbage, she reflects on what draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease. What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found—and can we create it from scratch? And how, Babine asks as she bakes cookies with her small niece and nephew, does a family create its own food culture across generations? Generous and bittersweet, All the Wild Hungers is an affecting chronicle of one family&’s experience of illness and of a writer's culinary attempt to make sense of the inexplicable. &“[Babine] continues to navigate her way through extraordinary challenges with ordinary comforts, finding poetry in the everyday. Reading this quiet book should provide the sort of balm for those in similar circumstances that writing it must have for the author.&”―Kirkus Reviews &“Profound…Anyone who has experienced a family member&’s struggle with cancer will be stabbed by recognition throughout this book…In the end, the overriding hunger referred to in this lovely book&’s title is the hunger for life.&”―Minneapolis Star Tribune
Copyright:
2019

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
184 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781571319838
Related ISBNs:
9781571313720
Publisher:
Milkweed Editions
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Karen Babine
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Cooking, Food and Wine, Health, Mind and Body, Psychology, Medicine
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

Reviews

No Rating Yet