Exploring food, politics and letting go
It’d be easy to argue that the last thing the world needs right now is another culinary travel memoir.
After all, there’s no shortage of clichéd sentimental journeys that trace a narrator’s quest to find meaning in the rustic foodways of rural communities. Despite the glut in this genre though, there’s still plenty of insight that could be gleaned from the culture of food, it just needs a writer willing to do a deep dive. Turns out that person is Jan Wong, who proved that the culinary travel memoir can still be relevant with Apron Strings: Navigating Food and Family in France, Italy, and China.
Wong, a former Globe and Mail columnist who currently works as a journalism professor in Fredericton, N. B., took advantage of a sabbatical to embark on a trip (grown son, Sam, in tow) that would see mother-and-son do a homestay with families in the three countries. The quest isn’t so terribly novel; what sets it apart is Wong’s nearly-obsessively sharp observational skills, which lead to snippets of wisdom about how culture and politics influence the kitchen.
In France, for example, the intrepid food writer learns the mother sauces, but takes breaks to familiarize herself with the country’s health-care system and examine the shifting attitudes toward immigration. Where the book really takes off, though, is when she gets to China, where she contemplates the relationship between food and class.
It’s hardly surprising that this section is enlightening, given Wong’s experience living in Beijing, first as a student and then as a foreign correspondent. It’s obviously a very different China than the one she first moved to in the 1970s. And, while she’s far from the only person to have observed the changes in that country, her years of experience writing about it for the Canadian reader makes this last chapter a neat introduction to both modern China and its cuisine.
So maybe the world could use one more culinary memoir, after all. Possibly even more, if they’re all as good as this one. Christine Sismondo is the author of America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops (Oxford University Press).