Love, Loss, and What We Ate
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| Author | Padma Lakshmi |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Food memoir |
| Published | 2016 |
| Publisher | ECCO |
| ISBN | 9780062202611 |
| OCLC | 911191142 |
| Dewey Decimal | 791.4502 |
| LC Class | PN1992.4.L29 A3 2016 |
Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir written by American television host Padma Lakshmi, published in 2016, was originally intended as a "book about healthy eating," but ended up being about a candid examination of being abandoned by her father, childhood sexual abuse, her youth in Chennai, harassment she suffered as a young immigrant to the United States, the motor-vehicle collision she survived at age 14 that left her scarred, her years-long battle with endometriosis, her marriage to writer Salman Rushdie, and the pregnancy that yielded her daughter.[1][2] The title nods to a 1995 memoir by Ilene Beckerman, Love, Loss and What I Wore, which Lakshmi's friend Nora Ephron had later adapted into a stage play.[3][4] Lakshmi had previously written two cookbooks, Easy Exotic and Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet.[3]
Reception
Glamour magazine recommended it as a "memoir-cookbook places you at Lakshmi's table with her brave mother and brilliant grandfather, and you feel nourished in every way."[5] Newsweek Global commented that the recipes include the "chili cheese toast of her childhood, the kumquat chutney she made in bulk after her marriage to Rushdie disintegrated, the egg-in-a-hole she ate just before going into labor. It's inconsistent as a cookbook, but the dishes should be read more as a refrain for the memoir's theme: It's not lost on Lakshmi that she has food to thank for her success."[2] Food & Wine recommended it as an "object of obsession" in a 2016 issue.[6]
Critical analysis
Lakshmi's book has been described as using "foodwork...as a form of 'consumable heritage' that can imbue the diasporic food writer with visibility and agency...Lakshmi's writing also contextualizes cooking as a means of fortifying cultural and familial bonds and of constructing her identity rather than associating it with feminine passivity and subordination."[7]
References
- ↑ Lakshmi, Padma (March 21, 2016). "The Loves of my Life". People.
- 1 2 Dixit, Iva (2016). "Mass Consumption". Newsweek Global. Vol. 166, no. 14. pp. 58–61 – via EBSCOhost.
- 1 2 "Telling Tales". India Today. April 18, 2016. p. 2 – via EBSCOhost.
- ↑ Blake, Meredith (2016-04-03). "What she ate, she wrote". The Los Angeles Times. pp. F1. Retrieved 2026-08-05. & "Hungry to speak her mind on her terms". The Los Angeles Times. 2016-04-03. pp. F9. Retrieved 2026-08-05.
- ↑ Egan, Elisabeth (April 2016). "Family? Drama? Check, and Check". Glamour. Vol. 114, no. 4. p. 154.
- ↑ "10 Objects of Our Obsession". Food & Wine. Vol. 39, no. 3. 2016. p. 18 – via EBSCOhost.
- ↑ Mohanty & Satapathy (2025), p. 1252.
Sources
- Mohanty, Manisha; Satapathy, Amrita (2025-10-20). "'I am what feeds me': food as subversive voice in Padma Lakshmi's Love, Loss, and What We Ate (2016)". Food, Culture & Society. 28 (5): 1251–1266. doi:10.1080/15528014.2024.2422679. ISSN 1552-8014.