‘Notes’ takes readers on coming-of-age journey
Detained HK bookseller Gui wins Swedish free speech prize
‘Notes on a Banana: A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression’ (Dey Street), by David Leite
Much has been contributed to the cannon of first-person literature on anxiety and mental health disorders.
But David Leite, a James Beard Awardwinning food writer and cookbook author, offers a witty account to the trove with his new memoir, “Notes on a Banana: A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression.”
Leite takes the reader on a coming-of-age journey — from his childhood in the bluecollar city of Fall River, Massachusetts, to a working professional in New York City.
First, Leite grew up in a devoutly Catholic and food-crazed Azorean family. “Food. It was one of the ways we bonded,” he writes.
In this traditional Portuguese family, living in what he calls the “armpit of Massachusetts,” Leite learned to be a big dreamer. In fact, dreaming is what sustained him throughout a childhood that was speckled with transgressions like a neighbor’s sexual advances. The whole time, Leite is struggling to understand the range of his emotions that seems to run higher and lower than what he believes to be the normal spectrum.
As a nod to the book’s title, his mother often referred to her son affectionately as “banana”. She also writes brief messages on bananas for her son. One of these messages is “Jesus loves you!”
Admittedly, his mother “is a blood hound for Jesus,” he writes. “She can sniff out sin before it happens the way some people smell burnt toast before a seizure.”
Complicating his early teen years, Leite starts becoming aware of the fact that he’s gay. This isn’t something he shares with his parents until he’s an adult and in a relationship with his long-term partner, Alan, many years later.
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STOCKHOLM: A bookseller detained in China for publishing books on the personal lives of President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party leaders has won a prize for free speech and press freedom awarded by a Swedish media organisation.
Gui Minhai is one of five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in 2015 and later appeared in mainland Chinese custody. The four others have returned to Hong Kong.
Awarding him the annual Anna Politkovskaya Memorial Prize, Publicistklubben said Gui had “despite personal risk ... shown great courage as a publisher and challenged the narrow-mined political agenda of the Chinese regime”.
The arrest of the five men prompted fears Beijing may be eroding the “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong has been governed as a special administrative region since its return to China from British rule in 1997.
NEW YORK: A former Hillary Clinton aide and speechwriter is writing a book about Clinton and her inner circle of advisers.
Penguin Press announced Wednesday that it had acquired Lissa Muscatine’s “Hillaryland”, which will chronicle her 25 years with Clinton. Penguin is calling “Hillaryland” a close look into “the tight-knit group of women” working with Clinton during her time as first lady, senator, secretary of state and presidential candidate.
Muscatine, who now co-owns a bookstore in Washington, wrote speeches for Clinton, advised her during her 2008 and 2016 presidential runs, and helped write the best-selling Clinton memoir “Living History”.
NEW YORK: Judd Apatow likes nothing more than topping his own joke.
The filmmaker is putting together a sequel to his best-selling “Sick in the Head”, which featured conversations with Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld and other comedians. The new book could only be called “Sicker in the Head”. It includes Norman Lear, Kevin Hart and Whitney Cummings.
Random House, which announced the book Wednesday, said no release date has been set.
NEW YORK: The next novel by “The Nightingale” author Kristin Hannah is another story of women’s resilience.
St Martin’s Press told The Associated Press on Tuesday that “The Great Alone” is scheduled to come out Feb 6, 2018. The book tells of a mother and daughter in the Alaskan wilderness. Hannah said in a statement that since visiting in the early 1980s she had been amazed by Alaskans’ ability to endure such a “harsh and beautiful world”.
“The Nightingale”, which has sold more than 3 million copies, is the story of two French sisters and their fight against the Nazi occupation during World War II. Tristar is producing the film version of “The Nightingale” and has acquired rights for “The Great Alone”. Hannah’s other books include “Home Front” and “Winter Garden”. (Agencies)