ABOUT THIS BOOK

Independent Publishers Book Awards (IPPY Awards) gold medalist

Khabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions what it means to belong and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country? These questions are integral to the author’s own immigrant journey to America as a daughter of Indian refugees (from what’s now Bangladesh to India during the 1947 Partition of India); as a woman of color in science; as a woman who left an abusive marriage; and as a woman who keeps her parents’ memory alive through her Bengali food.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Madhushree Ghosh works in oncology diagnostics, and is a social justice activist. Her work has been awarded a Notable Mention in Best American Essays in Food Writing and a Pushcart Prize nomination. She lives in San Diego, California.

REVIEWS

“Ghosh writes especially well through her memories, from tender (as a child shopping for goat with her father in a bustling Delhi market) to terrifying (desperately escaping a hotel room she was accidentally locked in before a job presentation). . . . A likable food memoir from a self-aware and culturally astute author.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“Khabaar is both a personal and collective voice that weaves meaning through its use of culinary images. . . . Ghosh explores what food means to life, to survival, to emotions, and certainly to being alive. . . . she invites readers to consider how [recipes] start conversations, as food creates one’s family, especially ‘when the family one was born into is gone’. . . . her personal narrative follows the genre that Krishnendu Ray and Anita Mannur have explored, finding the deshi heart in the immigrant kitchen.”

— South Asia Research

“Equal parts memoir, political commentary, and cookbook, this collection of essays braids food and memory and loss into a single compelling strand. . . . This book is deliciously engaging.”

— Los Angeles Review of Books

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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