Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen

From Publishers Weekly Judith Newton has spent her life searching for home and family while pursuing an academic career. From seeking affection from her mother and time spent in communal living to her involvement in civil rights struggles, her choice to have a child, and the death of her best friend, Newton has marked the many phases of her life with food. Each chapter of this engaging memoir includes a recipe that relates to a corresponding time in Newton's life. Readers will find her story delightful and resonant—especially given the universal relationship between food and family. This is a well-paced coming-of-age story with all the right ingredients: honesty, well-drawn characters, and plenty of insight. A Publishers Weekly Starred Review Publisher's Weekly, Starred ReviewLondon Book Festival: First Place Autobiography, December 2013Independent Publishers: Bronze Award, May 2013Hollywood Book Festival: Honorable Mention, July 2013Reader's Favorite: Finalist, July 2013Southern California Book Festival: Honorable Mention, September 2013National Indie Excellence Awards: Finalist, May 2014ForeWord Book of the Year Awards: Finalist, May 2014San Francisco Book Festival: Honorable Mention, May 2014Independent Reader "Approved," June 2014New York Book Festival: Honorable Mention, June 2014"In this captivating memoir, Newton draws the reader into a world where major events are brought to life with poignant food memories. . . . Each vignette is pitch-perfect, lively, and engaging, striking a delicate balance between self-disclosure and universal themes ofxa0 acceptance, love, community-building, and political engagement." --Janet A. Flammang, author of The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society " Tasting Home is more than a food memoir. Influenced by the civil rights struggle, the women's movement, and the AIDS epidemic, it is an odyssey of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth.xa0 Cooking serves as a powerful metaphor for the difficulties and pleasures of relations among mothers and daughters; husbands and wives; gays and heterosexuals; and racial-ethnic groups. Tasting Home, like a grand meal, is a resounding success."xa0 --Belinda Robnett, author of How Long? How Long? African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights. "This is a baby-boomer's dream: a book full of anecdotes about coming of age in during the sexual revolution of the sixties -- with recipes! . . . an ingeniously conceived, tightly written, and beautifully packaged memoir, a vibrant portrait of the American feminine cultural experience from the 1950s forward." Independent Publisher Judith Newton's TASTING HOME Shows Heart, Provides Food for Your Soul . Author Judith Newton has taken two of my favorite loves: food and family and put them together in a way that tells not just her story but that of so many of us. Who could deny that certain dishes that we might consider "comfort food" bring to mind a person or event that still lingers with us. xa0. . . Definitely a book that will speak to your heart as well as your taste buds, TASTING HOME proves to be real food for your soul.xa0xa0xa0 Cyrus Webb of Cyrus Webb Presents, Blogtalk Radio. From the Inside Flap "Engaging," "delightful and resonant. . . A well-paced memoir with all the right ingredients--honesty, well-drawn characters, and plenty of insight." Publisher's Weekly Select,xa0 Starred Reviewxa0 ("Outstanding in its genre.") Tasting Home is the history of a woman's emotional education, the romantic tale of a marriage between a straight woman and a gay man, and an exploration of the ways that cooking can lay the ground work for personal healing, intimate relation, and political community as well. Organized by decade and by the cookbooks that shaped author Judith Newton's life, it takes us on an extraordinary journey thought the cuisines, cultural spirit, and politics of the 1940s through 2011, complete with recipes. "In this elegantly written work, there's a sense of tension, of waiting for the other shoe to drop that creates a subliminal buzz. Through her personal story, Newton manages to weave in the entire course of the culture, a reflection of her skills as an historian and an accomplished writer as well as a born storyteller." Jeanette Ferrary, author of Out of the Kitchen and M.F.K. Fisher and Me "In this captivating memoir, each vignette is pitch-perfect, lively, and engaging, striking a delicate balance between self-disclosure and universal themes of acceptance, love, community-building, and political engagement." Janet A. Flammang, author of The Taste for Civilization "Influenced by the civil rights struggle, the women's movement, and the AIDS epidemic, Tasting Home is an odyssey of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth and, like a grand meal, it is a resounding success." Belinda Robnett, author of African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights Judith Newton is Professor Emerita in Women and Gender Studies at U.C. Davis where she directed the Women and Gender Studies program and the Consortium for Women and Research.xa0 She is the author and co-editor of five works of nonfiction on nineteenth-century British women writers, feminist criticism, women's history, and men'sxa0movements. Four of these works were reprinted by Routledge and the University of Michigan Press in the fall of 2012. xa0 Her most current work has appeared in The Huffington Post (February 8, 2013), The Redwood Coast Review (Winter 2012), poetalk (Summer, 2011). In 2011 and 2012 six chapters of her memoir won prizes in contests sponsored by Women's Memoir. She is currently at work on a feminist mystery and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California where she tends her garden and cooks for family and friends. Read more