Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir | 
pickLisa Donovan is my kind of chef, "uncomplicated and thoughtfully prepared - nothing flashy, just good, just delicious, and ultimately, just comforting." She writes about her life starting with an unexpected pregnancy and an abusive partner, struggling to make ends meet, how she found her pastry feet in Nashville, and how she pulled elements of her family background into her craft.
The thing is, 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.
No one ever tells you how lonely being a woman who is dedicated to her career, either by choice or necessity, will be....Worse yet are the women who find your career to be a commentary on their failures or ambitions, or see you as some kind of competition, and that equation has never made sense to me.
And, anyway, I‘ve learned from previous experiences that if someone values you only when you‘re about to walk out the door, you should definitely keep walking.
Poverty and inequality breed an unsettled nature in a person. And they breed something very dangerous and insidious in the powerful men who write the contracts with biases that they will never admit they have as they continue to decide how this world gets to go.
I had watched people who loved the work as much as I did get turned inside out on a daily basis, only to be used up and barely wrung our before they were used up again, with no consideration for their young hearts. I was supposed to be fine with how their eagerness to learn and their willingness to work hard were exploited.
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Found out about this fantastic memoir from The Bookshop in East Nashville on IG. Donovan is a local author and, gosh, her story is triumphant, but she went through some shit to get where she is. Part foodie/chef memoir, part life story, this is one of the best memoirs I‘ve read in a long time. It feels amazing to support local authors! Talent is abundant here in Music City.
