COMFORT FOOD FOR BREAKUPS
The Memoir of a Hungry Girl
By Marusya Bociurkiw
Arsenal Pulp, 171 pages, $19.95
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As the title suggests, Comfort Food for Breakups celebrates the old adage that the way to the heart is through the stomach. Following that indisputable logic, it only makes sense that food is one way to map our broken hearts, family histories and personal demons.
In her first book of non-fiction, a collection of personal essays, Marusya Bociurkiw creates an entire narrative around recipes both new and passed down for generations. Over bowls of soup, plates of perogies, tomato sandwiches and radishes, we meet her grandmother, parents, siblings and lovers. In a meditation over the importance of a strong cup of coffee in the morning, we encounter Ukraine as seen through the eyes of a second-generation Canadian "returning" to a land at once foreign and familiar.
If hunger is a metaphor for Bociurkiw's insatiable appetite for adventure and experience, then it follows that the foods that feed her best are complex and rich. In an exemplary contemplation, she traces her father's experience in a Nazi concentration camp through his stories of the soup on which he survived. As an artist, he bartered drawings for heartier servings, a family story Bociurkiw credits with teaching her the value of art at a young age.
It is clear that he watered down his experiences for his children's ears, and, mindful of the symbolism, Bociurkiw muses, "I despise watery soups, thin bisques, or bouillons of any kind. The soups I make are solidly built." Returning us into her own story, Bociurkiw paints the picture of her Sunday soup, the one she creates as she writes, the one she calls "the hyphen between two parts of my life and history."
Though she has a penchant for traditional fare, Bociurkiw's rebellious life ushered her to the outer circle of what was considered acceptable to her family. She was a lesbian feminist with a drive to express herself through art and activism, the progressiveness of her politics conflicts with the familial draw toward tradition. Throughout Comfort Food for Breakups, Bociurkiw winds up suspended between the realities of the old world and the new. She tightropes across both of her cultures, both critical and respectful of her parents wishes for her.
In Varennyky, a chapter named after a buttery potato-and-cheese dumpling, Bociurkiw hosts a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner for her friends. According to Bociurkiw's mother, varennyky are "something you always have on hand," and "once you have mastered the fine art of dough-making, the exact proportion of ingredients (none of which have been precisely recorded), the delicate gestures of mixing, and the complex technologies of kneading, cutting, stuffing, sealing, boiling, serving and storing -- a skill set which could take thirty years to perfect -- there's really nothing to it."
Outsourcing the kinds of dishes Bociurkiw requires on her dinner table proves a problem. When she instructs a friend to buy varennyky at a deli across town, the friend suggests she'll make the dumplings using an easy-to-follow recipe from the Internet. Bociurkiw, horrified by her friend's reductive approach to this customary dish, is loveable in her pedantic refusal of anything less than the real thing.
Simultaneously wishing to be inclusive of her friends and distraught over the idea of unorthodox dumplings, she seeks refuge with her mother's friends, the Divas of the Church. She is hoping to find equally horrified, sympathetic ears, and the Divas make their opinions known: "You don't go to a store to buy varennyky, no matter how good they are."
Bociurkiw demonstrates a keen sense of comic timing in her dealings with her Ukrainian heritage, a nice juxtaposition for her philosophical questioning. From reconciling her sexuality against a backdrop of family conflict, to balancing her academic work with her artistic endeavours, Comfort Food for Breakups tells Bociurkiw's empowering story.
Food has power. It can unify us and it can make us feel alienated. Having been the immigrant kid with the odd lunch of Danish meatballs and pickled beets, the stuff that the other kids liked to call dog food, I felt particular fondness for Bociurkiw's childhood embarrassment (and then ambivalence and then pride) over her dad's fondness for salo (pig's fat). Bociurkiw recalls that while her father savoured his comfort food, "we kids would inflate our cheeks, pretending to suppress an attack of vomiting ... even though it was completely legitimate by every known standard of every Canadian kid you knew, to say that salo was totally gross, your revulsion got transformed into something odd, then and there, and my dad's weird un-Canadian behaviour became the most sophisticated thing in the world."
Any food lover can appreciate that the book's entire plot structure hinges so eloquently on cuisine. Hospitably, Bociurkiw includes some of her favourite recipes, giving readers an opportunity to add depth to their reading experience. Metaphorically, it is worthwhile to consider the kinds of foods Bociurkiw prepares. In a culture of microwavable convenience "food," she cooks up stories and meals from scratch. She starts with the raw ingredients and boldly crafts colourful characters and flavourful settings.
Comfort Foods for Breakups is the narrative equivalent of a slow-cooked meal: Bocuirkiw's words simmer, attentive and passionate, beckoning readers to relish and enjoy.
Mette Bach writes a syndicated humour column called Not That Kind of Girl. She also contributes to The Vancouver Review.
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