Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
Categories
Politics & government

THE METH LUNCHES

Kim Foster

Food and Longing in an American City

James Beard Award-winning author Kim Foster reveals a new portrait of hunger and humanity in America.

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table - eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at the table? In THE METH LUNCHES, James Beard award-winning writer Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal complex reality when poverty and food intersect. Whether it's heirloom vegetables or a block of neon yellow government cheese, food is both a basic necessity and nuanced litmus test: what and how we eat reflects our communities, our cultures, and our place in the world. THE METH LUNCHES gives a glimpse into the lives of people living in Foster's Las Vegas community - the grocery store cashier who feels safer surrounded by food after surviving a childhood of hunger; the inmate baking a birthday cake with coffee creamer and Sprite; the unhoused woman growing scallions in the slice of sunlight on her passenger seat. This is what food looks like in the lives of real people. THE METH LUNCHES reveals stories of dysfunction intertwined with hope, of the insurmountable obstacles and fierce determination all playing out on the plates of ordinary people. It's a bold invitation to pull up a chair and reconsider our responsibilities to the most vulnerable among us. Welcome to the table. Kim Foster is a James Beard award-winning food essayist and cook. She writes about food as it intersects with addiction, foster care, family separation, poverty and mental illness, with a focus on telling the stories of people who don't always get to have their stories told. You can read her writing at www.KimInTheWest.com or her micro essays on IG @KimFosterNYC.

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Book Published 2023-10-10 by St. Martin's Press

Comments

Foster writes sensitively, with percussive and observant prose, portraying herself as well meaning yet also conscious of her status...[an] engaging, urgent report from the front lines of social decline.

In getting to know each of these characters, we get to know the very systems that contain, govern, impede and destroy them... This isn't food writing as comfort; this is food writing as an urgent, riveting, beautifully composed, and necessarily eye-opening.

I followed Kim Foster on social media years ago and every time she posted, I thought, "Damn, why isn't this a book?" My prayers were answered and now the world will get to know this extraordinary human being and stunning writer. This is not a book like one you've read before, but it is one you have to read, and will stay with you.

Kim Foster has written a deeply moving account of people and their food. Not the usual suspects, but people who have been traditionally left out of the conversation... These stories are the invisible ones, and Foster tells them with empathy, boldness and connection. A must read for anyone interested in food, cooking and how people really eat in our communities.

This book is a wake-up call for anyone who thinks of poverty merely in terms of welfare or the homeless... If you're feeling frozen by the magnitude of the problem of poverty, Foster's clearsighted vision will help you tap your inner resources. As she says, 'We can do better.'

Foster unflinchingly lays bare the reality of poverty and hunger in America, combining statistics with the true life stories of people in her own sphere... Her meditations on community and caring for others encourage readers to consider the building of a world where everyone has a place at a full, loving table.

Kim Foster drives her culinary food truck to the intersection of poverty and criminal justice and introduces readers to the world around them that many never see.