The Meth Lunches
Food and Longing in an American City
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
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 that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the 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 a 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 Americans. It’s a bold invitation to pull up a chair and reconsider our responsibilities to the most vulnerable among us. Welcome to the table.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Food writer Foster explores how food can serve as a catalyst for connection in communities ravaged by addiction, homelessness, and a global pandemic in this searing debut memoir. Relating her family's move from New York City to Las Vegas in the 2010s, Foster describes encountering for the first time public drug use ("at the supermarket, at the corner store"), which motivated her, her husband, and their two daughters to find ways to support their new community, including by offering well-paid employment to day laborers, becoming foster parents, and, most crucially, offering meals to anyone and everyone. These efforts culminated in a "full on street pantry" being built in their front yard during the height of Covid-19. Throughout, Foster interacts with such down-on-their-luck figures as Charlie, a meth-addicted handyman whom she starts having over for lunches; and Mrs B., "a lifer on the streets" who shares with Foster her love of kimchi. Foster's analysis of food as a social connector is incisive (she smartly observes the comforting role McDonald's plays as a source of "consistency and permanence in unpredictable lives"). Some readers may be troubled by Foster's admission that the James Beard Award–winning essay she adapted into this book reveals intimate personal details of its subjects' lives without their permission. Still, this glimpse of down-and-out America transfixes.
