The author, a longtime professor at Queens College, lived in
the West Village in the 1970’s. There were dinner parties with Maya Angelou and
James Baldwin, restaurants that are now forgotten, and a circle of writers and
intellectuals, many of whom I’d never heard of. She often mentions a
husband-wife team of restauranteurs, both of whom are dead now and forgotten.
Then there’s Maya Angelou, a central character in this book, described as being
very tall with a commanding presence, though she was also extremely egocentric
and seemed to live in her own world. Trips to Europe were commonplace in the
author’s life, but she left the West Village in the 1980’s and remained in
Brooklyn afterwards.
She begins with
her childhood, which was unusual in that it was somewhat “international.” Her
parents were involved with the UN, and they sent her to a school that was
geographically diverse, where she felt out of place. Not from color, but
because she was American! In a class of kids who spoke multiple languages, ate
exotic foods, spent summers in Europe and Asia, all she had to offer was her
banal American life. Her family eventually spent a summer in Martha’s Vinyard
and took a boat trip to Europe, and though she doesn’t say much about it, I wonder
how the locals of the time took to having a Black family in their midst. It
would be great material for a book.
Interspersed
throughout the book are recipes she picked up along the way, and lots of
European ones because she’s an obvious Francophile. She mentions a 1970’s PBS
show called Soul (also unknown to me) which was hosted by and featured notable
Black Americans. Then there was the Upper West Side, home at the time to a
sizeable number of Black intellectuals, plus Harry Belefonte, Morgan Freeman
(before he got famous) and Marcia Ann Gillespie, living in luxurious apartments
like Park West Village, and they all hung out at the Only Child restaurant at
226 West 79th. There were
other restaurants, like The Cellar, Under the Stairs, and Mikell’s, for Black
professionals, and they weren’t soul food joints. On the contrary, these were
Black Americans with money, and they wanted fancy European menus.
Most of the people
she mentions are the ones I’d never heard of. Restauranteurs Mary Painter and
George Garin have been dead for years and the restaurant gone too. By the
1980’s, AIDS was killing off a lot of these people, which may be one of the
reasons she moved to Brooklyn. I wonder if she missed it? Was there another
great circle of luminaries for her to hang out with? It might make a good
sequel to this book. I also learn here that Maya Angelou, aside from her
eccentricity and strange taste in men, was allergic to fish.
Lots of discussion about food, but a little too much
nostalgia.
