It's My Memoir and I Can Cry if I Want To

July 11, 2011 9:36 AM

Have you read the book, Blood Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton? Why are some people so adverse to pity-parties?

Nobody likes a victim mentality, myself included. Everybody has hardships, life isn't fair, we all have dysfunctional families to some degree, yada yada.

But... A few weeks ago I finished reading the book Blood Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton and I've been thinking about it a lot. Quite a few reviews, on Amazon, slam the author for having a "poor me" attitude. This book is a memoir. The author talks about her journey to becoming a successful chef. She also talks about her mother, who she is estranged from.

Hamilton doesn't directly come out and say it, but by reading between the lines you get the idea that the mother was narcissistic and hateful. The author was also more or less left to her own devices at a young age (13) when her parents divorced and were absorbed in their own problems.

So, a lot of reviewers think that it sucks that she speaks honestly about her mother and childhood. Some reviewers were disturbed, or annoyed, that she didn't have a better understanding of why the parents behaved as they did. The author left a lot out, and we do not get the entire story. We only get a chapter of her speaking negatively of the elderly mother for her cheap and overly frugal ways, and the author calls her a "spider". It is evident that the mother seriously wronged the author because the author seems to have no love or affection for the mother as an adult.

What fascinates me is how people are offended by the author's feelings. If she is pissed at her parents, or if she felt like they failed her somehow, or she had a crappy childhood, should she not mention it? As adults are we supposed to have this great understanding and frame it a different way in our memoirs and our hearts? If we mention it, are we perceived as victims? If we mention it, are we perceived as blaming?

The author doesn't appear to behave as a victim. From reading, she runs a successful restaurant and lives a pretty decent and full life, apart from a failed and dysfunctional relationship with her ex-husband.

I'm not faulting the reviewers or the author. I'm only fascinated and interested in this topic.

My questions:

Are people offended because writing about a parent in a negative way for the world to see is considered bad form?

If you read the book, why are people annoyed by the author and her perceptions and experiences? Does it seem that the author holds a grudge or can't move on?

If you didn't read the book, what are the rules, in adulthood, on how we should approach and think of crappy childhoods in our adult life? Are we immature, or victims, if we don't have empathy or understanding of our parents' behavior?

I realize this question is all over the place. Thanks for your opinions and thoughts.

posted by Fairchild to Human Relations (26 answers total)

I haven't read the book, so I can only speak as to your third question.

I think everyone is entitled to their belief as to what their childhoods were like - if that means they look at it as a victim or through the eyes of their immature pouty 5-year old. Your experience with your parents can never be adequately explained or understood by someone else beyond the very basic things we have in common because it is a unique experience to you. So, yeah, I see how it is confusing to say the least that all of those reviewers were getting up at arms about her description of her mother.

On a related note, it is also possible that people are getting bent out of shape because it is a daughter complaining about her mother. Not saying that they are sexist, but this might step on nerves more than a man complaining about his father. Mothers are venerated in our culture, particularly in relation to their daughters so for a daughter to come out and basically say that she was a bad mother is likely to really press some buttons for people.
posted by Leezie at 9:46 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I haven't read the book, but you did invite observations from the peanut gallery, and a few things come to mind.

First, almost everyone can point to something in their childhood which screwed them up to some extent. The ones that can't probably aren't being entirely honest or just haven't thought about it. Likewise, most people have come to terms with that. Even the people who aren't on speaking terms with their parents frequently move on to the point where they aren't actively bitter about things anymore. So spending and entire book of one's memoirs* one how terrible one's mother was can come off as a bit childish.

Second, the author has seemingly gone on to live a more-or-less normal, successful life, notwithstanding her relationship with her mother. The implication is that however bad her mother was, she couldn't have been that bad, because all of us know people whose parents were so toxic and/or abusive that they're still dealing with real material consequences decades later. If the author is presenting her issues with her mother as somehow unusual either in degree or extent, that could ring pretty hollow.

Here's the thing: as stated, almost everyone has issues with their parents, and almost everyone finds a way to come to terms with that eventually, with or without their parents continued involvement in their lives. If the author had presented her situation in a sort of "This is my particular instantiation of a general problem, and how I moved past it," a memoir is probably an okay place for such observations. But it sounds like she's doing more of a "My mother is an awful person and I'm still pissed at her" thing, without much in the way of objective justification for such an attitude. Hanging on to those feelings is a pretty undesirable trait.

*An activity many view as somewhat self-indulgent to begin with.
posted by valkyryn at 9:49 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

Here's the thing: as stated, almost everyone has issues with their parents, and almost everyone finds a way to come to terms with that eventually, with or without their parents continued involvement in their lives.

By contrast, I think that most people struggle to come to terms with their childhoods and their relationships with their parents - especially when there's bad stuff involved. So there's a tremendous temptation to disparage other people's pain, to label other people weak for talking about it, etc etc. Admitting that bad things happened to other people and that those things really were bad is too much like admitting that bad things happened to you.

A lot of people are really attached to the "I am successful and not a fuck-up and not a whiner" narrative about themselves, and saying "things happened to me and they hurt me and it had a lasting effect" is deeply threatening.
posted by Frowner at 10:01 AM on July 11, 2011 [16 favorites]

I haven't read the book, but I can tell you that I find adult people obsessing about their crappy childhoods just... kinda lame.

Now- this is generalizing and I am only speaking from my very boot-strappy point of view. I don't want to step on any toes and I don't offer this opinion to people in the middle of telling me about their shitty childhood. This might sound a little harsh.

Mostly, I find it distastful because they don't take responsibility for the hardships in their own lives. You only hear them obsessing about it because they want to TALK about it in the context that their mother screwed them up and now they are incapable of normal behavoir.

If you say, can't commit in relationships at thirty- it isn't JUST because your dad left when you were three. As an adult you have the power to recognise mistakes your parents made and their effects, and move on to correct those effects. I don't really care what brought you, as an adult, to be all screwy or bad behaved. Blaming it on your poor upbringing makes you sound slimey.

-- I do like hearing the nuts and bolts of how people fixed their bullshit, though. Owning their shit requires you to know where it came from- and saying it is fine. But your bad shit is not your parents' shit. They have their very own pile of shit that their are liable for (including their shitty parenting ability, aparently.)
posted by Blisterlips at 10:04 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you're interested in cooking memoirs and want another perspective on difficult maternal relationships, check out Ruth Reichl's books. She has a lot more perspective than Hamilton seems to (or, at least to my mind, does a better job expressing that perspective in writing). Maybe you'll find something interesting in the comparison.
posted by bcwinters at 10:07 AM on July 11, 2011 [6 favorites]

To me, a good memoir is story first, pity party second. As you said, we all have bad experiences in life, lots of people have unhappy families, and life isn't fair. The difference, in memoir, is that it's not me sitting across the dinner table from a friend having a bitch-fest. I am voluntarily spending my time reading this book, over a variety of other books (or other forms of media) I could have chosen. Presumably I paid for this book, too, so in addition to my time and mental energy/investment, that's $15-20 I spent on this that I could have used for something else.

If I find myself asking why did this person get a book deal? or what's the point?, it's all over. Plenty of really good memoirs feature the youthful struggles of the author, and yet the story is compelling enough that I'm not left assuming they're just a bunch of entitled whiners.
posted by Sara C. at 10:15 AM on July 11, 2011

My girlfriend is a foodie and reads a ton of food memoirs, including Reichl's. Blood, Bones, and Butter is the only one that my girlfriend has ever told me that I had to read. I finished it last night. It's definitely worth reading.

I never got a self-pitying sense from Hamilton in the slightest. She has a pretty darn problematic childhood and adolescence, but she describes the wonders in balance with the horrors.

Like most memoirs, in my opinion, it gets flabby towards the end -- memoirs are lumpier in their narrative form than novels or even most non-fiction books, I find. I have less patience for Hamilton's descriptions of her lousy marriage to an Italian and their many trips to Italy. And I, personally, can only read so many lush descriptions of food. So, though I found Hamilton sometimes tedious, I never found her self-pitying or self-aggrandizing.
posted by HeroZero at 10:16 AM on July 11, 2011

Ack, I meant to put a SPOILER WARNING above that post, but put it in angle brackets, so it got read as a screwed-up html tag. Sorry.
posted by HeroZero at 10:16 AM on July 11, 2011

I have read the book, and while I liked it over all, the portions about her mother (and the visit) were pretty painful to read. She still seems very raw and doesn't seem to have any adult perspective. Tobias Woolf's This Boy's Life and Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, are both written by grown-ups who have some insight as to why their parents acted as they did. Or so it seems to me.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:23 AM on July 11, 2011

Response by poster: Fantastic and smart contributions so far. Thanks so much to everybody. I have read Garlic and Sapphires by Reichl but not her other books where I believe she talks about family life more.

*******SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT**********


HeronZero, I didn't think she was self-pitying either, but a lot of people did. This is one of the reasons why I find it so interesting. Some people thought she was harsh and more than a few described her as lacking insight as Ideefixe mentions. And yes, she does offer plenty of balance with her descriptions of childhood parties and food and etc.
posted by Fairchild at 10:27 AM on July 11, 2011

Response by poster: apologies, HeroZero for misspelling your name.
posted by Fairchild at 10:28 AM on July 11, 2011

I have not read the book but did hear an interview with the author and she struck me as articulate and as having an interesting story to tell.

First, almost everyone can point to something in their childhood which screwed them up to some extent

I guess so? I have heard people talk about how a parent was not supportive of their career ambitions when they were in HS and how if they had had the opportunity to attend a summer program for whatever activity they would have had a much different life. That is a childhood that I would describe as being within normal limits.

Some of us are in the category of, "I was abused and a parent did nothing to stop it and indeed, blamed me" which, yeah, is going to leave you feeling permanently damaged no matter what you accomplish later on in life.

. . .almost everyone has issues with their parents, and almost everyone finds a way to come to terms with that eventually, with or without their parents continued involvement in their lives.

Whatever "coming to terms with" means for a person, they are still going to carry their past with them because it has become a part of them. Your statement sounds so pat, like, "Oh well, just dust yourself off, everyone had a tough time as a kid and just about everyone works it out."
posted by Francophone at 10:50 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I read the book. I personally found the descriptions of her mother problematic when compared to the searing descriptions of her marital relationship. The descriptions of her maternal interactions seemed incomplete. This seemed pointed when she described her later visit with her husband where the term "spider" was used. She even mentions how her husband looked at her after meeting her mother with something on the line of, "This, THIS, is the woman you have been describing to me?!" She is then pleased when she gets to say, "I told you so" when her mother is looking in their bedroom window to see if they are awake to her husband.

So, I do not fault her for her feelings for her mother, but I think she fails, to a certain extent, to give a more thoughtful reason for why she is so bitter towards her mother as opposed to her dad who neglected her at age 13. Heck, even her older siblings have different memories of that summer where Melissa swears that she was there and that Gabby was no completely alone so, the past is a spongy, slippery thing.
posted by jadepearl at 11:07 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Are people offended because writing about a parent in a negative way for the world to see is considered bad form?

If you read the book, why are people annoyed by the author and her perceptions and experiences? Does it seem that the author holds a grudge or can't move on?

My problems with the book on these scores was really more one of narrative incompleteness, as others have said. She spends the first part of the book setting up, in a very detailed manner, this eccentric-but-basically-loving-and-loveable family that helped spark her interest in food. Then virtually all of those people disappear. When her mother reappears in the narrative, there's very little to explain the author's intense aversion/bitterness, so it's incredibly jarring and weird that we're suddenly supposed to take it on faith that this woman who has previously only been described in relatively positive terms, has become a demanding, crazy shrew. That's just not-great writing, imo, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

I also felt Hamilton seemed to lack much empathy for the people in her life. Her treatment of her ex-girlfriend (while she's having her fling with her soon-to-be husband) is incredibly callous, and yet she (Hamilton) writes the she's the one being "flipped the bird" when the girlfriend finally has enough of the bad treatment and leaves. I remember saying outloud at that point, "Jesus, lady, you're lucky she didn't poison your coffee as a parting gift."

Likewise, she bacially mocks her husband's courting of her and the seriousness with which he seems to take the idea of getting married, but then she eventually becomes hostile to him because -- having taken to heart, evidently, the notion that she thought their marriage was basically a joke! -- he's not emotionally close to her (e.g., the scene on the way to the airport in which she has a meltdown because he's thinking about iPods).

In the end, as interesting as I found the book overall (and as much as I genuinely admire her ability to create her career the way she did), Hamilton strikes me as someone with some fairly profound blindspots in terms of how her own actions affect others.
posted by scody at 11:25 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

I read the book and really loved it. I love memoirs and food memoirs especially.

Scody nails it for me--we never get why she doesn't like her mother so much. I assumed there was just way more to the story that she was omitting. The same goes for the girlfriend. I felt she was leaving any strong emotion, other than anger, out. Same with the husband. He wooed her, but she never really gushed about him, but she married him and had two children with him. She must have liked him more than she actually let on.

While reading the book, I thought either she couldn't or wouldn't share her really deep emotions about any of these people. And that's kind of annoying in a memoir. But I'm such a sucker for food writing, I still really enjoyed this book and hearing about how her career progressed.
posted by jdl at 11:41 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I mostly agree with scody. I liked the book, but her relationships seem purposefully callous and cold. It just made me feel really sad and confused. I felt really bad for her ex-girlfriend, husband, and children.

So yeah, I enjoyed the book and am excited to try her restaurant, but she was a hard person to warm to.
posted by melissam at 11:44 AM on July 11, 2011

I have read the book and to me if anything what's annoying is the author's refusal to admit that she's a victim. It seemed to me like she went out of her way to make difficult choices--especially with her husband, but also with her work experiences--and I often wished I could just take her aside and say, "But why not marry someone you love? Why not tell the truth about your age?" etc etc. That made the book hard to read--but isn't a criticism, really--I think it raised a lot of thought-provoking questions about the nature of family and work. She certainly has negative things to say about her family relationships, but I don't think she was ever "poor me" about that.
posted by mlle valentine at 11:47 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I should clarify that by "refusal to be a victim" I mean she resolutely takes responsibility for the unconventional choices she made, and does not blame anything on her family or any other external factors.
posted by mlle valentine at 11:50 AM on July 11, 2011

My understanding of the criticism of BB&B is that Hamilton doesn't explain some very important relationships, takes very little responsibility for her own actions, and seems to blame others even when she clearly made bad decisions.

For example, Hamilton often gives credit for her love of cooking to her French mother, yet she is estranged from her. Why? The book doesn't really give a reason, despite all the bitterness directed toward her Mom. When her parents divorced, Hamilton was a kid of about 11 (I think?) and she ends up by herself in the parents' old house. Hamilton's Mom moved to Vermont and Hamilton chose not to go with her. All that follows--Hamilton lying about her age to get a job, stealing from another waitress, a downward spiral in her living circumstances that led her to eating ketchup packets, etc.--all that comes from her own decision not to go to Vermont. Her Dad was still around, she still contacted him, didn't seem angry with him at all, but she refuses to see her Mom for twenty years. I understand that Hamilton was very young, she went through a rough time, but she seems to bear no enmity for her father, just her Mom. Again, why?

Hamilton finally sees her Mom only when her brother dies. She is a mother herself at this point, but we haven't seen any reflection on her own relationship with her Mom, why it is bad or why she might want to mend it, nothing. She barely mentions the brother whose death causes her to go see her Mother again either. She doesn't hug Mom, is cold, just makes those spider queen comparisons and leaves. It's frustrating.

Other relationships are confusing as well. Hamilton is a lesbian in a serious relationship with another woman, but then marries an Italian man, and it seems she does so just because he needs a green card. But then she seems to want this to become a loving marriage despite the practical reasons for entering into it, and they have children together. She marries into this Italian family, goes to Italy and loves her new Italian MIL because they both enjoy cooking so much. Seems good, right? But all the while this is going on, she has pent-up frustrations, resents her husband. Still, she never discusses her feelings with him. She also never takes the time to try to learn a word of Italian to speak to the MIL she loves so much. But when she and the husband inevitably divorce, she blames him for the lack of communication and scathingly claims he never once said anything 'intelligent' to her the whole time they were together.

So it isn't just the relationship with the mother, but all the relationships in the book and the way Hamilton blames their failures on everyone but herself that grates on readers. Most of the criticism I've seen has basically said that maybe if she'd waited until she was older to write the book she might have had a little more insight and it would have been a better memoir.

Instead she just comes across as a not very likable, bitter, self-involved young woman with little or no empathy for anyone else in her life.
posted by misha at 11:58 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

misha- spot on, exactly how I felt
posted by melissam at 12:06 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Are people offended because writing about a parent in a negative way for the world to see is considered bad form?

Yes. Many people have suffered at the hands of their parents, but many are too heldfast to the idea that one MUST honor thy parents, and protect them from hurtful ideas about themselves at any cost - including to ourselves. To see someone speak out against it and be received with support is hard to accept.

If you read the book, why are people annoyed by the author and her perceptions and experiences? Does it seem that the author holds a grudge or can't move on?

Disclaimer: I haven't read this book, so this is my best guess. The author tries to justify exactly why in no less than concrete terms of hard life experiences why she has made the decision to estrange from her mom as she has. She wants others to understand, if that kind of empathy is possible. We are probably talking about a person who was forced to be silent about her pain for a very long time. The idea of another person suffering through what she suffered through is near inconceivable; thus, she's reaching out and shining light onto potential others that it's possible to outsurvive that kind of pain.

If you didn't read the book, what are the rules, in adulthood, on how we should approach and think of crappy childhoods in our adult life?

The rules haven't caught up yet. Many people are still unable to acknowledge their own childhood pains, thus, they're especially unable to proactively react to it in others. The best approach with any distressed communication is just to listen. If you can't listen to it, then say so and move on. It's not rude. People in pain understand that it's painful, especially if you haven't resolved it in yourself. Some people think "pity partiers" just want to wallow in their own pain (and often they're probably right)... but for some people it's an effective way to process what was real vs. what was perceived. The best an outsider can do is reflect their truth and accept the shape their path took them.

Are we immature, or victims, if we don't have empathy or understanding of our parents' behavior?

We remain both immature and victims if we don't have empathy or understanding of our parents' behavior. We become survivors and leaders when we see ourselves throughout.
posted by human ecologist at 12:59 PM on July 11, 2011

I did read the book, but I didn't focus on the parts where she talks about her relationship with her mother. Because she left out so many details, I just wondered where her malice was coming from. It seemed disjointed.
posted by sugarbomb at 1:45 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm still reading the book and am loving it so far. To me, she has a strange mix of utter honesty and vulnerability and apparent lack of insight into her own feelings and actions. I found it a bit confusing, as sometimes she seems like she is laying bare her soul and talking about things that are deeply important to her, and other times she seems baffled by what she's doing and unable to really articulate it (the whole husband bit, e.g.)

So is it that she understands but doesn't explain to the reader, or is it that she herself doesn't understand why she behaves the way she does?
posted by gingerbeer at 1:53 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Upon reading other people's comments...yes. What's beautiful in the book is her love of food and of work. You sort of have to ignore her discussions of relationships in order to get there.
posted by HeroZero at 3:47 PM on July 11, 2011

The implication is that however bad her mother was, she couldn't have been that bad, because all of us know people whose parents were so toxic and/or abusive that they're still dealing with real material consequences decades later.

Here's the thing: as stated, almost everyone has issues with their parents, and almost everyone finds a way to come to terms with that eventually, with or without their parents continued involvement in their lives.

You can be successful and still have not dealt with an abusive childhood if that abusive childhood does not affect the things that make you successful. For example, if you emerged from your childhood with a desperate fear of failure and unrelenting perfectionism, that could very well result in a lot of professional success even as it tore you apart inside.


Are people offended because writing about a parent in a negative way for the world to see is considered bad form?

If you didn't read the book, what are the rules, in adulthood, on how we should approach and think of crappy childhoods in our adult life? Are we immature, or victims, if we don't have empathy or understanding of our parents' behavior?

I think most people have generally happy childhoods. Maybe their parents didn't let them stay out as late as they like or didn't support their major or their first boyfriend, but in general they felt loved and wanted.

If you grow up in this environment it can be terribly difficult to conceptualize what it's like to grow up in a truly abusive household. You know what it's like to be mad at your parents, but don't know what it's like to have a giant gaping hole where "Somewhere in this world is a safe place" should be. You think people maybe just got yelled at more than normal. So you end up concluding that they aren't sucking it up hard enough when really it goes deeper than that. It sounds like this woman did not do a great job of describing where her bitterness came from and people just assumed she was ungrateful rather than there were real discernible reasons for those feelings.
posted by Anonymous at 4:48 PM on July 11, 2011

Wow. I was actually impressed by the honesty of the book. I came away from the unexplained resentment and hostility towardsher mother and coldness towards her ex girlfriend and father of her children was a sense that GB could accept judgement without eliciting sympathy. Many memoirs seem eager to contextualize or gloss over the authors actions or flaws, but Hamilton bares herself nakedly. She is one tough lady. And she doesn't care what any of us think.
posted by Lisitasan at 7:13 AM on July 15, 2011