Queer in the Kitchen Where Are the LGBT Food Memoirs

Queer in the Kitchen Where Are the LGBT Food Memoirs Today is  The Human Rights Campaign’s National Coming Out Day, and to celebrate we are spending the day featuring  LGBTQ+ voices. Enjoy all the posts  here! When I was starting my writing career after graduate school, I dove into food writing. I had always loved cookingâ€"planning at one point to be a chefâ€"and I gobbled up food memoirs. I sought out stories of falling in love, of knowing oneself, coming of age, developing taste, and above all, cooking. These were my people, my fellow eaters, my fellow writers. I took a quote from Kim Seversons excellent memoir,  Spoon Fed, quite to heart:  Where there was good food there were usually good people. I learned that early on. I also learned that making food for people was something I was good at. It gave me a sense of peace and belonging. When I made food, I made a tribe. I had found my tribe in the growing collection of food memoirs that lined my shelves. We were all people who cooked, people who ate. Our food choices were an important part of our stories and our identities. But there was a problemâ€"with few exceptions, Seversons book one of them, there were no LGBT people. Where were th e LGBT food memoirs? I was elated every time I saw a chefbian contestant on  Top Chef, entertaining little crushes that lasted until my contestant was eliminated from the show. There had been several lesbian chefs featured on the Food Network for years. Why hadnt there been cross-over from queer presence on food television to queer presence in food literature? I couldnt help but be frustrated. I was eager to see LGBT stories represented in a world I already loved so much. Some might beg the question, if were in it for the food, why does queerness matter? Tamar Adler makes a wonderful point in her beautiful book An Everlasting Meal, A meal is cooked by the mind, heart, and hands of the cook, not by her pots and pans. So it is on the former that I recommend focusing your investments. The person behind the food, the mind, heart, and hands has to be as important as the food being prepared. A collection of recipesâ€"just the food, maamâ€"is a cookbook; a food memoir is the story of a human. And so few of the memoirs out there were by queer humans. A colleague pointed out that food writing is a niche market, as is LGBT writing, and so perhaps the compounded niche-ness is problematic on the publishing end of things. Perhaps. Eventually I found Gabrielle Hamilton, who wrote openly about her relationship with a woman in  Blood, Bones, and Butter. And in the years since then, Molly Wizenberg has come out, filling me with hope that there will (maybe? hopefully?) be a new Wizenberg memoir on the horizon. Lucy Knisley, an LGBT writer, gave us the lovely graphic memoir  Relish. And Hannah Hart, of My Drunk Kitchen fame and the host of her own Food Network show  I Hart Food, has given us both a cookbook/memoir (the My Drunk Kitchen Cookbook) and a full-fledged memoir of her own, Buffering:  Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded. And beyond straight (or not-straight, as the case may be) memoirs, we have new works from LGBT authors to be excited about.  The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History  by Michael Twitty was released in August; this history of African American culinary history in the South comes from a Jewish writer of color who is also gay. His investigation of the debate of who owns Southern foodâ€"the racial and economic implications, the historical roots of the cuisine, the indelible ties to slavery, and the journey of both people and foodâ€"is an important undertaking. Its a different kind of memoir, not your usual coming of age or love story. Additionally, Julia Turshens new book,  Feed the Resistance: Recipes and Ideas for Getting Involved, is a cookbook and essay collection, featuring contributions from an array of chefs, writers, and activists. While this isnt a memoir, it does represent LGBT voices (Turshens own as well as others) in the field. But maybe thats where we have to startâ€"maybe in a search for queer voices, we must expect a queering of form and content as well? I still wish for the food memoirs of my yesteryearsâ€"the coming of age, the love story, the making of a life, the protection of family, and always, always, the food, the food, the food. Ill hope for LGBT writers to write about their lives and their appetites; Ill hope that publishers see the value in such stories, equal to that of their straight counterparts. In the meantime, Ill enjoy those old stories, as well as the new ones, the ones that challenge me in my own definition of a food memoir, a food history, a food story. Also In This Story Stream The Struggle with Stories of Queer Suffering 5 Fantastic Comics about Queer Women LGBTQ Works in the Time of Crisis 5 Books about Bisexual Women of Color 3 On A YA Theme: A Rainbow of Queer YA Genre Kryptonite: Queer Ladies Solving Crime Reading My Way Out of The Closet 7 Bisexual Protagonists I Wish I Met Growing Up An Introduction To the Queer Bookternet Great Bisexual Representation in Romance My Queer Ship Came In: Legend of Korra Giveaway: What Are the Best LGBTQ Reads for Kids? Nothing New Under The Sun How Comics Helped Me Come Out As Non-Binary View all ncod posts--> Sign up for True Story to receive nonfiction news, new releases, and must-read forthcoming titles. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.