Christie Tate is a Chicago-based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atticus Review, The Rumpus, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. Her debut memoir Group was published by Avid Reader Press in October 2020.
Christie’s essay “The Family Recipe” appears in the Spring 2021 issue of Carve. Order print here or download here to read.
When describing your grandmother, you never mention the term ‘ladylike,’ but fellow Southern granddaughters may sense its presence. To be ladylike is to have personal elegance and a studied, watchful relationship to one’s own body (and perhaps also, a suspicious attitude toward bodily delights). In some ways though, the discipline that being ladylike requires runs parallel to the process of writing and revision. A writer turns her sentences around, kills her darlings, and tries to resist self-indulgence. Although it’s easy to see how demands to be ladylike cause harm, are there any other, more positive connections between your grandmother’s way of being and your work as a writer? Or do you see writing memoir and creative nonfiction as an inherently un-ladylike act?
My very proper Southern grandmother would definitely frown on the personal essay and the memoir because it divulges too much, and privacy and keeping your business to yourself—especially your mess—are both hallmarks of being a lady. But I do feel a kinship around the notion of being a good host. My grandmother had those mints in the living room and the formal dining room. Those mints were sweet treats for guests in her home to feel welcome.
As I writer, I want to always offer my readers something tasty that lingers and gives them pleasure the same way those mints delighted me and many of my grandmother's guests. Being a good writer is not unlike being a good host. I want my readers to see what I see and feel what I felt—that's part of being a good host to those who come to my writing. I want to offer comfortable chairs in the form of vivid scenes, and I want to give my readers something exhilarating to look out, so I try to avoid cliches or lazy conclusions. In the sense that readers are like visitors into my world, I line up with my grandmother pretty neatly.
Although the essay focuses on you and your grandmother, it’s a story crowded with other women: your mother, your sister, a cousin, and most notably of all, the daughter you were pregnant with. You recreate your grandmother’s brownie recipe for the first time in your unborn daughter’s warming, yet invisible presence. It’s very similar to your grandmother’s presence—the daughter and the grandmother, both there and not there at once. How similar are the sensations of pregnancy to the sense of being haunted by the beloved dead? Could you say more about the connection between your at-the-time unknowable daughter and the knowledge that you lost after your grandmother’s death?
When my daughter was baking in my belly, I had dreams about the girl she would become. I dreamed of her walking down the hall, singing Skidamarink-A-Dink-A-Dink or dancing in our living room. My mind could imagine her, even when she was the size of a small apple.
That conjuring was the way that my mind and spirit readied myself for her. And that's how it feels with my grandmother too. I dream about her—her Oil of Olay cheeks and her warbly voice. My mind holds her close—in day dreams and night dreams—and her memory lives on. The connection to the women in my family, the generation above and the one coming after me, is beyond the physical world.
My mother and I are the living links between my grandmother and my daughter, who can only now her through us. That sense of being a conduit to the woman that has passed feels very similar to how my body was the conduit for my daughter to pass into the world. When my grandmother died, I lost all the chances to ask her factual questions or gather data from her about her feelings, memories, wishes, plans, fears—all of it. But the truth is that I knew her and experienced her enough to imagine the things I missed, and that might be just as emotionally accurate as any answer she would have given me had I asked about it when she was still alive.
Although your grandmother didn’t talk about personal things, she wept when your visits ended. She showed her affection with gifts of brownies, time spent shopping, a package you received after her death. Only twice do you quote her words directly: first, when you transcribe her brownie recipe, and second, when you share that she called you “sweet baby girl.” How did your grandmother’s preference for action over language shape the way you wrote this piece?
As I wrote this piece, I sifted through all impressions I have of my grandmother. I knew she loved me very much, but I pieced that together through the actions that she took. She wasn't a hugger or a cuddler. She was quite emotionally reserved, which is why her tears at the end of our visits were always so stunning. In this essay, I wanted to show how, as a girl and young woman, I understood my grandmother's love for me, even though she never sat me down and proclaimed it.
Now that I'm a mother and old enough to see my own emotional limitations, I have so much more empathy and tenderness toward the adults who loved me growing up. My grandmother never had therapy, or 12-step recovery, or Glennon Doyle books urging her to be brave and emotionally open. With the tools at her disposal—brownies, a credit card, an Estee Lauder gift pack—she showed me she thought of me, held me in her heart, and wanted to stay connected.
Food—and sharing food—is often very spiritual. Your grandmother was a devout Catholic, so she would have shared the meal of the Eucharist, but the history of disordered eating in your family left you without a “box of recipes” to call your own. Your grandmother’s brownies are the one exception, and recreating the recipe is a fraught, not-quite-successful experience—until the essay’s end, when you share a meal with friends. You describe loving, profane laughter as your friends rename the brownies, landing on “Grandmother’s Ashes.” It’s a far cry from your grandmother’s ordered elegance, but there’s something Catholic about it anyway: ashes and a christening. I’m curious about how you relate the sacred and the profane here. Can you say more about these connections in your work?
Inside my soul there is an eternal battle between the sacred and the profane, and the "Grandma's Ashes" nickname for these brownies is a perfect crystallization of that. On the one hand, the good Catholic girl in me—the girl in her all-white First Communion dress and veil—wants to be pleasing to God, to her Grandmother, to the nuns, the priests, and all the people in my community. And at the very same time, I want to crack a joke and scream "Penis" during mass.
I've felt those tensions as far back as my memories reach. I see it in all of my writing. I've been called out in writing groups for making very untasteful jokes during emotional or intense scenes. It can really rub readers the wrong way. And I have to be careful: Sometimes the jokes are a way to hide or blunt the terror or agony of a scene, in which case it should probably go. But sometimes, it's an honest reflection of how I see the world, always with both reverence and mockery, and in those cases, the profane must remain because it's an honest reflection of my point of view.
Who are some of the food writers (or writers dealing with food) whose work you admire?
Roxane Gay has an essay about making cherry bars that is interspersed with her relationship to disordered eating, and it's my favorite essay of hers. It's called We Lie The Most to Ourselves and I read it once for a class with Lidia Yunavitch and it blew my Smartwool socks clear off my feet.
Kiese Laymon's writing about the way he ate after witnessing sexual trauma and sexual violence in Heavy is like nothing I've ever read. And his description of binge eating during college is unforgettable.
Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was the first memoir I read that delved into the practice of eating locally and responsibly. She opened my eyes to the moral implications of eating without consciousness and it really changed how I thought about eating.
David Chang's memoir Eat a Peach was really about being a chef, but his discussion of food as creativity and innovation were revelatory and entertaining.
It's almost cliche to love Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bordain, but I love his sass and swagger, his hatred of pretension. His singular voice was such a valuable contribution to food writing. He's a friend to the profane, and I love him for it.