If you had to pick a genre of food writing that you are most drawn to, what would you pick? For me, it would be the food memoir. I mean it is after all a memoir where food is the lens through which the story is told. And who doesn’t like food stories, stories about food, stories with food…

Recently, I taught a five week course on writing the food memoir. The class was structured around those things I wish I had learned before embarking on my own food memoir writing journey. I introduced students to the food memoir genre and helped them explore how personal stories, memory, and cultural identity intersect with food. I’m currently working to restructure the course so that I can offer it online at some point, with a focus on African food writing.

Writers often grapple with how much truth they should tell, particularly when that truth involves other players who have behaved badly. How much of the story do you tell? How do you tell it? Because contrary to popular belief not all food stories are joyous and wondrous. Sometimes, they are underscored by rage, grief, and sadness. To this as I said to my students, you have to remind yourself that (1) you have a right to your truth and (2) your story deserves to be told. But how you tell is where the skill comes in, balancing the retelling of something that carries with it an emotional charge.

The truth is when writing a memoir of any kind, you are really confronting yourself on the page. And to do that means you cannot censor who you are. One of the best books I have read on this particular issue and how to best tackle it, has been Lisa Dale Norton’s Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir.

Writing memoir in general is like a therapy session that requires a thorough and thoughtful examination’s of one’s life. And with food at the center, one has to ask how it has factored into the makeup of who you are and why. To begin, I challenge you to identify key moments in your culinary life that are rich with significance and then see if you can narrow those experiences to find the central theme of what could become your food memoir.