num_pages: 384
description: The stunning and long-awaited memoir from the beloved founder of the James Beard Award-winning website Leites Culinariaa candid courageous and at times laugh-out-loud funny story of family food mental illness and sexual identity.Born into a family of Azorean immigrants David Leite grew up in the 1960s in a devoutly Catholic blue-collar food-crazed Portuguese home in Fall River Massachusetts. A clever and determined dreamer with a vivid imagination and a flair for the dramatic Banana as his mother endearingly called him yearned to live in a middle-class house with a swinging kitchen door just like the ones on television and fell in love with everything French thanks to his Portuguese and French-Canadian godmother. But David also struggled with the emotional devastation of manic depression. Until he was diagnosed in his mid-thirties David found relief from his wild mood swings in learning about food watching Julia Child and cooking for others.Notes on a Banana is his heartfelt unflinchingly honest yet tender memoir of growing up accepting himself and turning his love of food into an award-winning career. Reminiscing about the people and events that shaped him David looks back at the highs and lows of his life: from his rejection of being gay and his attempt to turn straight through Aesthetic Realism a cult in downtown Manhattan to becoming a writer cookbook author and web publisher to his twenty-four-year relationship with Alan known to millions of Davids readers as The One which began with (what else?) food. Throughout the journey David returns to his stoves and tables and those of his family as a way of grounding himself.A blend of Kay Redfield Jamisons An Unquiet Mind the food memoirs by Ruth Reichl Anthony Bourdain and Gabrielle Hamilton and the character-rich storytelling of Augusten Burroughs David Sedaris and Jenny Lawson Notes on a Banana is a feast that dazzles delights and ultimately heals.
language: English
title: Notes on a Banana: A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression
publisher: Dey Street Books