Literary Mama Rewind: Holiday Food
Welcome to Literary Mama Rewind! Every few weeks we’ll round up some of our favorite essays, stories, poems, columns and reviews from the Literary Mama archives relating to a particular theme. It’s the season of holidays, turkeys dinners, and sharing food with family. This week we are digging into some Literary Mama food stories.
- Tales of Food and Family: A Review of Quarter-Acre Farm, Eating for Beginners, A Tiger in the Kitchen, and Maman’s Homesick Pie by Lisa Catherine Harper in Reviews
Food stories can be aspirational; they can tell of a cuisine, culture, or community. They might be about sourcing ingredients, a family dinner, a dessert. Sometimes they’re prescriptive; other times, they offer a vicarious thrill. But the best food stories, as writers like M.F.K. Fisher proved decades ago, aren’t just about food.
- Falling From Ridge Street by Charlene Logan Burnett in Fiction
I’m only a few minutes late, but when I pull into the driveway Mama is already out on the steps, standing under the aluminum awning. She comes stumping down the walkway in her clear plastic rain boots. She’s clutching the slow-cooked Butterball turkey she brings to Aunt Ena’s every year.
- Bloodlines by KD Cunningham in Fiction
Lane’s mother insisted on Thanksgiving at the family home outside Atlanta. Compliance to this mandate was the one rule Lane considered non-negotiable, and it seemed enough to placate her mother for several months.
- Holiday Lights by Avery Fischer Udagawa from the Column Four Worlds
Remember Thanksgivukkah? The American celebration of Thanksgiving coincided with the first day (and second night) of Hanukkah on November 28, for the first time since the nineteenth century.
- The Family Food by Ericka Lutz from the Column Red Diaper Dharma
Food is an important part of this family’s identity. We celebrate bounty, we talk about food past and present.
- We Are Family by Ona Gritz from the Column Doing It Differently
Since I’ve been with Dan, Ethan and I have celebrated Thanksgiving with his family at his mom’s house in Collegeville. A few years ago, when she was eighty-one, Miriam remarried after nearly thirty years of widowhood. At first it seemed a practical decision.
- Reading the Holidays by Rebecca Steinitz from the Column How Does your Bookshelf Grow?
As Thanksgiving approaches, you may be thinking about stuffing, pie, and football, but I’ve got Rivka on my mind. Rivka is the heroine of Rivka’s First Thanksgiving, a picture book about an immigrant girl on the Lower East Side who persuades her family’s rebbe that the Jews should be allowed to celebrate Thanksgiving.
- Junk Food Poem by Rachel Levy in Poetry
Start stressing about Halloween festivities at the kiddies’ school. Read flyer about Room 9 Halloween party. Experience disbelief that each family is to send in some kind of Halloween junk.