Crazy in the Kitchen

“Illuminate[s] the difficulties of reconciling past and present . . . DeSalvo celebrates the table of her ancestors by savoring her own rediscovered history.” —New York Times Book Review

During Louise DeSalvo's childhood in 1950s New Jersey, the kitchen becomes the site for fierce generational battle. Louise's step-grandmother insists on recreating the domestic habits of her Southern Italian peasant upbringing, clashing with Louise's convenience-food-loving mother; Louise, meanwhile, dreams of cooking perfect fresh pasta in her own kitchen. But as Louise grows up to indulge in amazing food and travels to Italy herself, she arrives at a fuller and more compassionate picture of her own roots. And, in the process, she reveals that our image of the bounteous Italian American kitchen may exist in part to mask a sometimes painful history.

“Louise DeSalvo packs about six courses of emotional wallop into her slim memoir . . . [A] tough, courageous story, one of hard-won wisdom and memory.” —San Francisco Chronicle