Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family

by Debra Spark (Editor), Deborah Joy Corey (Editor)

“More local color than a steamed lobster wearing wild blueberry bracelets, along with a mess of wistful nostalgia for any reader raised in Maine or New England.” —Portland Press HeraldNearly 70 renowned New England writers gather round the table to talk food and how it sustains us—mind, body, and soul An award-winning collection of essays by internationally recognized and beloved foodies, Breaking Bread celebrates local foods, family, and community, while exploring how what’s on our plates engages with what’s grief, pleasure, love, ethics, race, and class.Here, you’ll find reflections from top literary talents and food writers like Award-winning novelist Lily King on connecting with her children over a tweaked chocolate chip cookie recipePulitzer Prize recipient Richard Russo on the Italian soup his mother snubbed that he came to enjoyCoauthor of Mad Honey Jennifer Finney Boylan on how cheese pizza holds her family together through the good and the badCoauthor of About Grief Brian Shuff on how greasy takeout can be life-giving food for the grieving soulAward-winning writer Ron Currie on the childhood shame—and adult pride—of your mother being a “lunch lady”Author and homesteader Margaret Hathaway on building a community cookbook to bring food and family together in the early days of COVID-19Other essays address a beloved childhood food from Iran, the horror of starving in a prison camp, and the urge to bake pot brownies for an ill friend.Rich and flavorful, Breaking Bread brings together some of the most influential voices in the literary and food worlds to show how we experience life through the foods we eat.Proceeds from this collection will benefit Blue Angel, a Maine-based nonprofit founded by writer and Breaking Bread coeditor Deborah Joy Corey to combat hunger. The organization purchases food from local farmers and delivers it directly to families in need.

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 24, 2022

About the author

Debra Spark is the author of The Pretty Girl, a collection of stories about art and deception that will be published in April 2012 by Four Way Books. She is the author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint, The Ghost of Bridgetown and Good for the Jews. Spark edited the best-selling anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America's New Young Writers and her popular lectures on writing are collected in Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing. Spark has also written for Esquire, Ploughshares, The New York Times, Food and Wine, Yankee, Down East, The Washington Post, Maine Home + Design and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other places. She has been the recipient of several awards including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe College, and the John Zacharis/Ploughshares award for best first book. She is a professor at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and lives with her husband and son in North Yarmouth, Maine.

Reviews

[Anne-Marie Oomen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful anthology! And full of the kind of thinking we need in order to build consciousness about hunger, our food mentality, our understanding of the ecosystem of food in the U.S., and also to better celebrate our love of good food. The wide range of responses is divided into sections like "Love and Loss," and "Taste and Distaste" and in every section you'll find familiar author names and new names, all writers who donated their essays to raise money for the nonprofit Blue Angel. It's one of those you can dip in and out of and find both pleasure in the writing and inspiration in the thinking. I was especially taken with editor, Debra Spark's essay, "Prize Inside, and Tanya Whiton's "For the Winter," as well as Susan Minot's and Myronn Hardy's essays, but all these folks offer insight in this book about food and hunger. Thanks to the editors and writers for creating a book both relevant and rich in the pleasure of reading.

[Lydia Pazienza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for a review. Having lived in upstate NY and Maine, this book was like a warm hug from home. Dozens of cozy stories about food and the way we relate to it.