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Stir-Fried Memories
Like a Chinese menu, "Stir-fried Memories" serves tasty morsels that appeal to a variety of interests. It is a collection of essays and personal experience pieces combined much like vegetables are mixed together in a wok for a tasty stir-fried meal heaped with flavor, color, nutrition, and fragrance. It offers readers a taste of living through humor, travel, childhood, major moves, sickness, death, and family.
166 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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May 4, 2012
Cherise Wyneken's Stir-Fried Memories offers meals with a moral, nourishment for the spirit. Wyneken writes about food the way I've been told I write about sex: brilliantly, with lots of color, flavor, fragrance, and delight.
The list of acknowledgments for this book of prose memoir is impressive, with pieces appearing previously in 31 different publications. Early in the narrative, Wyneken, who is quite attractive in person (see cover image of book), writes that as a girl she thought of herself as plain. Her humility and kindness suffuse the collection, which she presents to us with mild interpretations meant to gently guide or suggest good behavior and personal philosophy.
In her piece "Stir-Fried Genes," she writes of her father not believing man would ever reach the moon, reminding me of my ancient landlady in the Dominican Republic in the 1980s, who believed the moonshot and moonwalk had been faked for television. This man, firmly rooted in the last century and perhaps even the one before that, progressed so far that he ended up proud of a family full of members of different ethnic groups. Her father's life becomes a lesson in the value of diversity and progress.
Wyneken varies her narrative technique in interesting ways. In "Dear Doctor," she writes in the voice of her mother, Lydia, writing a letter to her doctor. In a piece about hurricane Floyd, she shares some of the secrets of living to a ripe old age: gratitude and optimism. "Like the hot water with bodies and clothes -- giving thanks opens the pores of our perspective and gets rid of the dirt." Like the poet that she is, she uses metaphor to teach us. "Making Babies," a short two-page piece, is about forgiveness. "The Fellowship of Women" celebrates female community, including a very practical piece of advice about not expecting husbands to listen to female chit-chat in the same way other women do.
In the last piece in the book, Wyneken uses her characteristic modest, self-deprecatory humor about her lack of athletic ability to lead into her career as a poet. The entire book is a delight to read, funny, fun and exemplary. This is memoir with meaning and a mission: to make our lives better by making ourselves better in small ways. Even the publisher, Whispering Angel Books, "donates a portion of its book sales to charities promoting physical, emotional and spiritual healing." Stir-Fried Memories is a set of stories that quietly promote that healing in the most enjoyable manner.
The list of acknowledgments for this book of prose memoir is impressive, with pieces appearing previously in 31 different publications. Early in the narrative, Wyneken, who is quite attractive in person (see cover image of book), writes that as a girl she thought of herself as plain. Her humility and kindness suffuse the collection, which she presents to us with mild interpretations meant to gently guide or suggest good behavior and personal philosophy.
In her piece "Stir-Fried Genes," she writes of her father not believing man would ever reach the moon, reminding me of my ancient landlady in the Dominican Republic in the 1980s, who believed the moonshot and moonwalk had been faked for television. This man, firmly rooted in the last century and perhaps even the one before that, progressed so far that he ended up proud of a family full of members of different ethnic groups. Her father's life becomes a lesson in the value of diversity and progress.
Wyneken varies her narrative technique in interesting ways. In "Dear Doctor," she writes in the voice of her mother, Lydia, writing a letter to her doctor. In a piece about hurricane Floyd, she shares some of the secrets of living to a ripe old age: gratitude and optimism. "Like the hot water with bodies and clothes -- giving thanks opens the pores of our perspective and gets rid of the dirt." Like the poet that she is, she uses metaphor to teach us. "Making Babies," a short two-page piece, is about forgiveness. "The Fellowship of Women" celebrates female community, including a very practical piece of advice about not expecting husbands to listen to female chit-chat in the same way other women do.
In the last piece in the book, Wyneken uses her characteristic modest, self-deprecatory humor about her lack of athletic ability to lead into her career as a poet. The entire book is a delight to read, funny, fun and exemplary. This is memoir with meaning and a mission: to make our lives better by making ourselves better in small ways. Even the publisher, Whispering Angel Books, "donates a portion of its book sales to charities promoting physical, emotional and spiritual healing." Stir-Fried Memories is a set of stories that quietly promote that healing in the most enjoyable manner.
Displaying 1 of 1 review