On Eating - by Alicia Kennedy Hardcover

Book Synopsis

With lush prose and evocative storytelling, Alicia Kennedy shares her journey "from eater to cook," exploring how we can eat for both joy and justice in a warming, overworked, and globalized world.

As a girl, I ate like a king.

So begins beloved author, journalist, and influencer Alicia Kennedy's captivating new book. On Eating is more than a memoir; in true Alicia Kennedy style, it is also on desire, on the roles of women "in the kitchen," on domesticity, on diaspora, on foodways and food sovereignty, on home and how we find home through food, on how food can help us bring us back to those we love. Beautifully rooted in place--from Long Island (on oysters, on martinis) to San Juan (on plantains, on sugar), On Eating is not only a provocative bildungsroman and a celebration of appetite, it also challenges each of us to consider our own relationship with food, and how our need to eat--to live--impacts the world.

Ultimately, On Eating is a paean food and those who grow and cook it, asking the urgent questions in our world today about what and how we eat.

Review Quotes

On Eating is both a compelling first-person account of a curious and intelligent woman's life, and a well-researched and engagingly written treatise on the practices of growing, distributing, cooking and eating food, a serious subject that Kennedy nevertheless imbues with wit and charm. I am always better and smarter for having read anything Alicia Kennedy has written.--Laurie Woolever, author of Care And Feeding: A Memoir

Gorgeous and effortless in her prose, Alicia Kennedy weaves seamlessly through the personal, the historical, and the political. Through evocative and clear-eyed examinations of her appetites, Kennedy inspires readers to reflect on the way food shapes both our inner and outer worlds.

On Eating is a remarkable feat of memoir, cultural criticism, and a celebration of both food and one's own humanity.--Ifrah Ahmed, author of Soomaaliya: A Cookbook

Already a cultural force in food writing and activism, Alicia Kennedy reveals her lyrical and literary gifts to the fullest in this richly personal memoir. Acutely observed, sparklingly intelligent, forging pointed and unexpected connections between the personal and the political--it's a fresh, seductive, unputdownable read.--Anya von Bremzen, author of National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home

If her book No Meat Required and her laser-sharp writing on her weekly newsletter hadn't already proved it, On Eating emphatically confirms Alicia Kennedy as one of the food industry's most thoughtful thinkers. Kennedy's prose is alive, tactile, and at times heartbreaking, a delicious and evocative exploration of how the food we consume shapes how we view ourselves and the world around us, and vice versa. I devoured every word.--Hetty Lui McKinnon, food writer and cookbook author

This book moved me with its uncompromising reflections on grief, its elegant and witty chronicles of falling in love, and its gentle challenges to make me think harder about what I eat and why. Alicia Kennedy is great company on the page, and On Eating asserts her as not only one of our finest writers on food but one of our finest writers, period.--Mayukh Sen, author of Love, Queenie and The Tastemakers

About the Author

Alicia Kennedy is a writer from New York based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her weekly newsletter on food culture, politics, and media, "From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy," has been mentioned by TheNew York Times, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, W, Food52, Coveteur, and Vogue Australia. Her writing has appeared in Eater, British Vogue, The Guardian, and Harper's Bazaar. Kennedy has appeared on Good Morning America, the BBC World Service, and many more radio shows and podcasts to talk about issues of food media, culture, and meat consumption.