Over the years, we have worked with a variety of memoir genres. In the three decades we have been devoted to memoirs, we have seen the development of a variety of lifestory books. It seems there is a genre for every need! There is one genre—which came to our attention when a reader sent an article in for this blog—which combines memoir writing with food-related experiences—and even recipes. This sort of memoir is often called a foodoir.
Who would have thought?
The foodoir—love the name!—is a new sort of memoir type. A foodoir can be about a love affair with a certain cuisine—Chinese, French, Mexican, etc.—or about a food addiction that the writer has struggled with or a food identity that has supported the writer thought the years. It can also be simply about food in one’s family—often ethnic-oriented food that causes warm nostalgia to comfort the writer. (For me, the tourtière turns a holiday meal into a nostalgic connection with my mémère‘s dinner table as she and my grandfather welcomed us to their home.)
A special feature for the family memoir
While most writers may not choose to devote whole book to food, many—especially those writing exclusively for family and friends, have included recipes in their books of lifestories. What a lovely gift to leave one’s family with favorite recipes—yours or grandma’s.
Even if you are writing for a larger audience, food can create setting for the story you are seeking to tell. Your life did not happen in a vacuum and neither should your memoir.
Let these articles inform you.
Perhaps the articles below will help you to reconsider the role of food in your life and perhaps include more mention of food in your memoir and of its effects on your development.
While you may not be contemplating creating a foodoir, here is a link [that will take you outside of The Memoir Network] to explore titles devoted to food and its role in the lives of writers.
In conclusion
Remember: whatever you do today, write a bit on your memoir.
The Theme-focused Memoir
While many of the people whom I have helped to write a memoir have come ostensibly to write about their lives – to celebrate some achievement, I would say that many of these people are also writing a mission-driven memoir, a theme-focused memoir. Behind the desire to tell about their lives, there is some intent […]
How to Write Different Parts of Myself in My Memoir or, A Vignette on Diversity—Inner Diversity
When I sent a call out for vignettes on diversity, I had not thought of intra-psychic diversity but here came a piece from Sue Lebel Young based on this very modality! Sue is a long time subscriber to this e-newsletter. Here is her post answering “how to write different parts of myself in my memoir.” […]
Do You Have a Foodoir in You?
The continuing popularity of books about food and cookery is well demonstrated by the vast range available—just look along the cookery and food shelves in any bookshop or at the long lists available online. Many are collections of recipes by well-known chefs and bakers, but there is also another genre which combines memoir writing with […]
Kate Christensen talks about writing Blue Plate Special / An Autobiography of My Appetites and about writing in general.
In her memoir, novelist Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and the The Astral Hotel, has undertaken to organize her lifestory around food. It is an interesting concept, a theme, around which to make sense of a lifetime. If the memoir is, as Rainer Maria Rilke said of poetry, a momentary order, then Kate […]