Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger

May 15, 2020
The debut memoir of family and food from a renowned pastry chef and food writer. Donovan, who received a James Beard Award for her work in Food & Wine, chronicles her career as a chef and her unrelenting passion for the culinary arts, but she also digs into her family history, offering keen reflections on the intersections of race and gender and spirited discussions of work, class, and opportunity. Donovan grew up in a mixed-race military family that featured both Southern and Mexican lineages, and she ably conveys the assimilationist pain of reckoning with the family pretense that it "was better to be invisible than to not be white." From childhood to adulthood, the author unpacks her complex heritage through fascinating stories of trials, persistence, and success. At times, overly nostalgic flashbacks cloud the narrative--Donovan admits that she is "faulty for romanticizing all number of things. I know this about myself"--but a compelling voice holds everything together. The author integrates harrowing accounts of abuse, rape, abortion, marriage, and motherhood with discussions of her varied professional experiences, most of which have included workplace sexism. Donovan pointedly shows how women's labor behind the scenes is often exploited to advance profits and egos. "Women are revered straight into abjection," she writes, "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." Occasionally, the author's underdetailed representations flatten the impact of her experiences, but Donovan is to be commended for bringing exploitive work relationships to light while tackling the ego-driven world of celebrity chefs. As such, the book is not just a lively story of a talented pastry chef at the top of her game; it's also a profoundly relatable memoir of the pervasive push back against female success. A fresh voice with a recipe for empowerment.

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May 18, 2020
Pastry chef and James Beard Award–winning essayist Donovan writes of her life in the restaurant industry in this feisty confessional. An army brat whose family moved often, Donovan eventually landed in a small coastal Florida town “that felt wholly and destructively permanent.” There, she worked as a server in a ramshackle Italian eatery, a “cigar den housed in a doublewide trailer.” It was “an oasis” for her, and her caring coworkers became her “first kitchen family.” Plans to leave for college and escape an abusive boyfriend ended with an unexpected pregnancy. She sought refuge by teaching herself to bake using library books and soon found “control through food” and “a deep sense of worth and value.” She moved to Nashville, juggled her career with raising her daughter, and became pastry chef at several top restaurants. Despite earning widespread acclaim, male owners and chefs refused to pay her fairly, she writes, and she eventually left restaurant work to cook at yoga retreats and other special events, “breaking away from the... toxic patriarchal culture” to work independently and reclaim “the right to cook and be in a kitchen in a way that felt right to me.” Donovan’s candid, passionate memoir will resonate with anyone who has worked in professional kitchens, and particularly women.

July 1, 2020
Donovan, a James Beard Award-winning pastry chef from the South, in this memoir reveals the struggles and hard-fought lessons that have made her the courageous woman that she is today. Inspired by a comment from food-world star Diana Kennedy, who encouraged the author to tell her own story, the book is written in a fierce and visceral style. Donovan illustrates the intense pressures of being a woman, focusing on her early years?both the challenges and the happy times?and also the complexity of her relationships with the women in her life. Passionate about her craft, Donovan credits her success to her willingness to say yes: "I followed a path that became clear only as I placed one foot in front of the other and said yes, very often with unknown outcomes." She articulates universal truths while also encouraging readers to think about their own relationships. In a world that all too often credits male chefs for the culinary contributions of women and people of color, this is a valuable addition to the culinary memoir canon.Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2020

An acclaimed pastry chef in some of the South's top kitchens and winner of a James Beard Award for her writing, Donovan survived a hardscrabble upbringing in a family anxious about its mixed-race background and dismissive of women. As a young mother, she was also abused. But she stuck with her career, finally listening to food doyenne Diana Kennedy's advice: "Stop letting men tell your story."

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