Review: Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I read this book for the 2016 Goodreads Read Harder challenge, and I'm so glad I did. I never would have picked it up otherwise. "A FOOD memoir? Ugh." Honestly I had a moment where I wondered how to get around the requirement, but it stuck out at me from the "recommended books in this genre" list.

You can read the accolades and summary for yourself, but know I agree with them.

Annia's form of storytelling is one of my favorites: a coherent timeline dotted with memories and stories and various interruptions. It sometimes can make things a little awkward to follow, especially in an audiobook, but I feel like more soul comes through that way. She tucks in little quotes from the people she met or other relevant sources. "What makes us civilized? .... We are the only creatures who share food with strangers, people not from our family or tribe... Cambridge University archaeologist Martin Jones in Feast: Why Humans Share Food." I loved "Before Islam, the word Shariah, the path to God, meant the path to a watering hole."

She's completely right that so many memories are tied to food or smells (of food). She mentioned "midwest chicken", and it reminded me that I liked pork rinds (stay with me here) because they first time I tried them I thought they taste like whatever Mom used to spice chicken skin. I actually can't recall what that tastes like, and don't know what she used, but just "midwest chicken" brought that up just the same.

This book also had me looking up recipes right at left. She has a collection in the back, most too involved for me to try my terrible hand at, but I wanted to know what they LOOKED like. She is fantastic at describing the presentation of the food as well as the scenes and the people, and I felt I could see them... but food isn't quite the same. I wondered if the printed version has photos.

When I reached the time of the 2006 Lebanon War, something I barely knew was happening at the time, I was a little shocked at the...closeness of it all. I submit I didn't actually know, except in hindsight, that it was going on at all. It's terrible. Both to read it, and to have not known it was happening. We see photos all the time, of child soldiers, and hear it really happened, and she witnessed it, and gave it to us, and it was terrible. And I felt terrible for not knowing it happened.

While I was reading this book, I happened upon Toufic El Rassi's graphic novel "Arab in America". It was captivating and eye opening, the Lebanese-born-American witnessing all the other side of this coin, the side Annia would have both seen and been a little oblivious to, had she stayed in America. At the end, the author catches a plane to Lebanon in 2006, when Annia's there. Maybe they ran into each other, and talked over cups of Arak.

I'm very glad I read this book, and recommended it to my grandmother, who also admitted she'd never have picked it up. If there is any better commendation for the 2016 Goodreads Read Harder Challenge, it's that it found me this book. Nearly any book that can make me grok how little I really know about the world can be useful, but this one has soul, and I loved it.

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