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6 Works 80 Membros 5 Críticas

Obras por Lisa Donovan

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Conhecimento Comum

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Membros

Críticas

A slim volume bought because of the focus on food and cooking. But Lisa Donovan explores so much more from her troubled personal life to the challenge of being a woman in the restaurant business. It is a powerful tale with a few jarring scenes including rape and animal harvesting. She doesn't pull any punches. But, she also brings a joy and hope to her story: she knows she can take what life hands out and has fought hard to be able to call herself, in the acknowledgements, the luckiest woman on earth.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
witchyrichy | 4 outras críticas | Oct 17, 2023 |
My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/qHb-M-wC3dQ

Enjoy!
 
Assinalado
booklover3258 | 4 outras críticas | May 2, 2022 |
Digital audiobook read by the author
3.5***

Donovan is a chef and award-winning essayist who has worked in a number of celebrated restaurant kitchens throughout the South. This is her memoir.

Her passion and focus has been on desserts but she knows her way around the entire kitchen. Her journey from Army brat to single mother to just-another-restaurant-worker to pastry star is interesting, and she tells her story with insight and honesty. She recalls the hard work and the discouraging way she was treated by men who didn’t value her contributions because she was a woman (and yet, were quick to give credit to their own mothers, grandmothers, and aunts who nurtured their own love of food and cooking). And she relishes in the memories of her successful endeavors and reflects on the lessons learned.

One of the more telling events in her career is outlined on the book jacket: “…she had made the perfect dessert at a celebration for food-world goddess Diana Kennedy. When Kennedy sked why she had not heard of her, Donovan said she did not know. ‘I do,’ Kennedy said. ‘Stop letting men tell your story.’” I’m so glad that she listened to that advice.

Donovan narrates the audio book version herself. I cannot imagine that anyone else could have done a better job.
… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
BookConcierge | 4 outras críticas | Nov 10, 2021 |
A powerful memoir from renowned pastry chef Lisa Donovan, which deals with her difficult childhood in a struggling, mixed-race Southern family; her abusive relationship with the father of her first child; and her struggle to make a place for herself in a restaurant industry which is often sexist and classist. (I flat-out gasped at her saying that even when she'd reached a point in her career that she had a national profile, her boss was still only paying her $15 an hour, and told her that if she wanted a raise she'd have to fire one of her junior staff to get it.)

Donovan is a vivid and robust writer, by turns humorous and bitter, although prone to over-writing in a way I always think of as symptomatic of an MFA. I was also a bit uneasy at times with how much she equated womanhood with the provision of food and with motherhood. Still, when Donovan's on, she's on: “Women are revered straight into abjection, useful only as a totem of inspiration. When we go to make that work our own, we are unable to survive in the industry the men built, the one they sell our wares within.” Preach.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
siriaeve | 4 outras críticas | Jul 14, 2021 |

Listas

Estatísticas

Obras
6
Membros
80
Popularidade
#224,854
Avaliação
½ 3.5
Críticas
5
ISBN
11

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