It was one of those days. I came home, tired and ready for anything other than work. And there was a package for me. I opened it. It was a book entitled Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee – a beautiful, sort of Provencal cover of yellow with fleur de lis. I set it to the side and, after it sat around for a while, eventually I read it. A memoir, which focuses on a young woman’s struggle with her identity (adopted in Korea, living in the US and then in Europe), her relationships with her adoptive family and men in her life, and her ongoing love affair with food. I was grateful – what a gift to come floating free into my life. I even found a familiar moment in the memoir, having spent a tiny bit of time on the little island in Paris where the author once had a poetry store. So, when I had the chance to do an email interview, I took it (with thanks to Brita Rosenheim of YC Media for organizing it). So, here are a few questions and answers with the author of Trail of Crumbs, Kim Sunee. And yes, the subtitle is key: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home.
Bibliochef: Trail of Crumbs has been described as a culinary travel memoir. Can you tell us a bit, first, about your notion of a memoir and how you came to write one?
Kim: I think it’s important to note that a memoir is not an autobiography. You can write several memoirs in a lifetime. But when writing memoir, you have to step outside of yourself and (with the help of a great editor) only include that which is important to the heart of the narrative. In my story, love, travel, food and the search for identity and home were the shaping elements.
Bibliochef: The word culinary in that description is, of course, part of why readers of “Cooking with Ideas” are interested in hearing from you. Can you talk some about the place of food in your life – and how you came to decide to include recipes in your book? The title seems to allude to Hansel and Gretel’s trail of crumbs. . . where did the title come from?
Kim: When I was first meeting with agents, I originally wanted to write a cookbook. But then I met Joy Tutela of the David Black Literary Agency and we started talking about my story and the idea of a memoir. I already had the title, Trail of Crumbs, in my head for several years—like a song lyric I couldn’t forget—never really knowing what it would become. I was thinking of the fairy tale as well, of course. Finding our way back home through food has an always been an obsession of mine, along with the search for where we belong in the world, and cooking and sharing recipes.
Bibliochef: The notions of travel and home seem key to your book – and yet seem to be in some tension. Food seems to move across boundaries for you –both national and other boundaries of time, space, memory. Why food and travel? How are they linked for you? Linked to or through food?
Kim: Sometimes we need to travel in order to come back home. But I’ve also learned that home is really within ourselves—our sense of security and the inner journey. It’s our best turtle-like quality—once we have that sense of self, we can take it with us wherever we go, and feel at home. Food and the culture of food in other places, of course, is also a way in which we understand others and, ultimately, ourselves.
Bibliochef: Of course, one of the places that matters to your narrative is New Orleans. And, quite obviously, Hurricane Katrina has had an enormous impact on New Orleans – I wonder if you have any comment on the ongoing impact of the hurricane?
Kim: I still feel a lot of outrage and the sorrow of loss...for so many...However, I think the chefs of the city and people from all over the world gathered and supported one another in ways only food can bring people together.
Bibliochef: You have written a book – and are now involved with “Cottage Living” magazine as a food editor. Can you talk some about your writing process – and any differences you see between the two types of writing?
Kim: I just wrote an essay for IACP [International Association of Culinary Professionals] about editing vs. writing. [For the article, click here.] I think they are 2 different ways of thinking...but being an editor definitely helped me be a better writer. The writing process for me is a difficult one. I am constantly revising and laboring, but I’ve tried to let the writer come in first and write and then allow room for the editor to have her place—after the creative process—to revise and edit.
Bibliochef: Many of the reviews – and even the comments on the back of your book –focus on your writing as about a relationship. Writing as a woman, do you have any comment on how much attention there is – in the book and in responses to the book – to the main male character? Do you find more attention to him than to yourself as narrator/author?
Kim: I was surprised, perhaps naively so, about how much attention (in interviews and reviews) was focused on the male character, as you put it. Happily, I’ve received many letters on my Web site, from men and women, about how they appreciated the honesty with which I wrote about love and my relationship, in particular. I’ve come to understand that reviews or reactions to the book are often more about the reviewer than about me as an author/narrator. [For Kim's website, click here.]
Bibliochef: In the book, you also write about the poetry bookshop you had in Paris. And you speak of your own efforts at writing poetry. Can you comment on poetry? Any relation to the themes of food/home/travel?
Kim: Poetry for me is the distillation of a single moment that is so pure and resonates at a certain time in our lives. It’s music and love and the world of small things all wrapped up in a single line of beauty. It’s like the perfect bite—you don’t need the whole meal or the entire dish, just a balanced combination of flavors. I still write poems and food seems to find its way in my poetry now as well. I published a few recently on Powells.com under original essays. [For Kim's original essay at www.powells.com, click here.] People ask why I wrote a memoir first. My questions and obsessions with food and love and the search for home would be the same whether in a cookbook or a book of poems...it just happens that I started with the memoir.
Bibliochef: What music, films, books related to food (other than your own!) would you recommend? Why? (These could be scholarly or otherwise!)
Kim: There are so many, I’m sure I will forget to include a lot of them, but here’s a start: All of MFK Fisher and Elizabeth David. Julia Child and Paula Wolfert. Jean Anderson. Dorie Greenspan. The journal Gastronomica. I LOVE Jim Harrison’s The Raw and The Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand. Films: "Mostly Martha", "Babette’s Feast", and I recently watched a Japanese film called "Tampopo" about a woman in search of making the perfect bowl of noodles. It’s a spaghetti western in more ways than one. I also like "Ermo"—the quiet beauty of that woman making the dough... And all those fun names for pies in "Waitress". There are so many more—Under the Tuscan Sun, "Big Night", Waverly Root...Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford. I love all their books—I don’t think I’ve cooked from them but I love the depth of their curiosity. I think Artisan publishes some of the most beautiful cookbooks. Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries—I wish I had written that one. Alice Waters. I always go back to the very basic La Cuisinere Provençale by Jean-Baptiste Reboul. Outlaw Cook by John Thorne. [For Thorne's e-zine, click here.] The Southern Foodways Alliance. ......
Bibliochef: Wow. What a list. Thanks. Some of these are familiar and I love them all -- and some new! I'll be out there looking for them. Meanwhile, what do you eat for comfort food?
Kim: It really depends. A bowl of pasta with some sort of crispy chewy pork product is always comforting. Gumbo with potato salad. Red beans and Rice or sometimes just a bowl of fragrant steamed rice with a pat of salted butter or a drizzle of olive oil. I love cheese and Tarte Tatin with a dollop of chilled crème fraiche.
Bibliochef: What am I not asking that I should? What question have you never been asked that you have always wanted to be asked? What's your answer?
Kim: Hmmm...I need to think about that one. These are all great questions and thank you for including me on your site.
Bibliochef: Well, thanks. And thanks again for your book -- and for all the new things I learned through this interview.
For other interviews, click here or try here for a(n allegedly) feminist review of Trail of Crumbs or here for a review from "Northwest Asian Weekly."
Kim Sunee
Trail of Crumbs
memoir
culinary memoir
travel memoir
