Laura Hutson Hunter

NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

Pastry chef and social activist Paola Velez describes herself as a nerd from the Bronx who truly felt seen for the first time while watching Steve Urkel on Family Matters. In a heartfelt introduction that practically begs for a longer memoir, she calls her debut cookbook, Bodega Bakes: Recipes for Sweets and Treats Inspired by My Corner Store, “a mix of my classical training and love of Americana filtered through the Bronx and the islands of the Caribbean.” Velez promises that you can find most of the ingredients for her recipes inside a bodega, a place she defines as “a densely inhabited mini market where Jarritos, Cap’n Crunch, shampoo, gossip, and chopped cheeses peacefully coexist.” The book’s first section is dedicated to cookies, most importantly, her popular Thick’ems. The OG Chocolate Chip Thick’em, which Velez once sold to raise money so that disadvantaged Brooklyn girls could buy period products, uses few ingredients to great effect. (“Makes 8 Thiiiiiick cookies,” she writes.) The OGs are followed by recipes for Triple Chocolate Noir Thick’ems, Tres Leches Thick’ems and more. Velez’s casual writing is as fun to read as a cookbook gets. For example, when describing the blending process for the Matcha Thick’ems, Velez instructs readers to “pulse the mixer on and off, almost like you’re trying to jump-start a car.” Bodega Bakes also features 13(!) ways to make flan, a beginner’s guide to Dominican cakes, freezer desserts (sweet plantain gelato, anyone?) and plenty more morsels that will demand second helpings. 

 

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & Drink

Mushroom Gastronomy

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

Mushroom Gastronomy: The Art of Cooking With Mushrooms is part cookbook, part encyclopedia. But because of its laser-focused attention to a single ingredient—the protean mushroom—it never feels overwhelming in its scope. In fact, I put down Mushroom Gastronomy with a determination to learn even more about the ever-fascinating fungus, which historically has somehow seemed delicate and dangerous, delicious and repugnant all at once. Let’s start with the delicious, as author Krista Towns does. Her fascination with mushrooms is apparent from the first pages, where she describes a childhood spent digging into dirt in the woods of rural Ohio, fascinated by all the things she saw. Chapters like “The Mushroom Pantry,” “Cooking Methods” and “Preservation” equip readers with a brief but thorough education while showcasing Towns’ talent as a photographer. She shot the book’s photos, which are in turn fascinating (as in her shot of the Lion’s Mane variety, which looks a little like the Tribbles from that episode of Star Trek) and mouth-watering (I could practically taste the Maitake Philly cheesesteak). The recipes are organized around types of mushrooms, so if you happen to love morels, you can thumb straight to chicken-stuffed morels with Marsala sauce, as I did. The majority of the recipes included in Mushroom Gastronomy come from regions that embrace mushrooms—mainly Spain, Italy, France and Asia. That allows Towns to throw a fairly wide culinary net. You’ll find recipes for stroganoff, chantilly potatoes, omelets, a croque monsieur and more, all with a unique mushroom-centric approach. A treat for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike, Mushroom Gastronomy even includes a spin on beef Wellington that incorporates goat cheese and portobellos wrapped in puff pastry that’s enough to make even the most carnivorous among us consider a plant-based (fungi-based?) lifestyle. 

Mushroom Gastronomy’s part cookbook, part encyclopedia approach to the ever-fascinating fungus is as educational as it is mouthwatering.
NonfictionLifestylesFashion

Fashion First

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

Reading through Diane Keaton’s Fashion First is a little like seeing a legacy band on tour. Sure, there’s some time spent on looks that followed outdated trends and brief experimental phases—in Keaton’s case, these are almost always hair-related—but that’s overshadowed by the sheer number of hits. The key moment falls around halfway through the book, when a set of twin images shows Keaton in the tomboyish Ralph Lauren suiting that would soon become her signature style. It’s like hearing the first few bars of “Gimme Shelter”—you know the roof’s about to get blown off. What makes Fashion First all the more exciting is that you can see what it took to get there and the fun Keaton has had along the way. The book is organized like a photo album with a loose chronological structure, beginning with a handful of baby photos, including prescient snaps of a toddler Keaton wearing a bowler hat. The “1960” chapter delves into Keaton’s entrance into theater, never downplaying her interest in costumes first, acting second. If anything, Keaton’s insistence that style matters makes sense when you consider that her most iconic roles are known for their stylishness, from Annie Hall to Baby Boom to Book Club. Handwritten captions add moments of intimacy to a glossy, photo-heavy tome. Still, because this is Diane Keaton we’re talking about, she maintains a self-effacing charm throughout, including several misses alongside her greatest hits. One particular shot from the “1980” chapter shows Keaton in a long-sleeved ankle-length dress, which she’s paired with a very high-collared blouse and loafers, thick wooly socks and layers of pearls. In the caption, she confesses that she was on vacation “somewhere tropical—and no, I am not kidding.” The undercurrent of humor elevates the book from mere fashion bible (although it is that) to an essential record of how to be cool.

Beloved actress Diane Keaton’s Fashion First is both a style bible and an essential record of how to be cool.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

Belly Full

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

The colorful, flavorful Belly Full: Exploring Caribbean Cuisine through 11 Fundamental Ingredients and over 100 Recipes accomplishes what might appear to be a daunting task—distilling a multifaceted culture’s cuisine into a 256-page book. Luckily, Brooklyn-based author Lesley Enston understands that challenge, and has chosen to make Belly Full a playful, not overwhelming, read. She organizes the book into fundamental ingredients: beans, calabaza, cassava, chayote, coconut, cornmeal, okra, plantains, rice, salted cod and Scotch bonnet peppers. Beyond that, she describes additional common ingredients—such as culantro, which is similar to but not exactly like cilantro—so that newbies to Caribbean cuisine have an informed approach. Enston grew up in a half-Trinidadian, half-Canadian household in Toronto, and often attended Trinidadian family functions. “We never talked much about the origins of these dishes,” she writes, “but the pride that went into preparing and serving them was clear.” In keeping with its Caribbean subject matter, Belly Full is filled with saturated colors and vibrant photography from Marc Baptiste. Enston’s Trini chow mein is particularly appealing, with its kitchen-sink approach to the traditional Asian dish. It’s also a fun portal into the culture: “This is a clear example of the influence of the Chinese indentured servants brought to Trinidad by British colonists after the abolition of slavery in the region,” she writes. An even deeper dive into cultural distinction is that the dish uses lo mein, not chow mein, noodles. “Why it’s called chow mein when you use lo mein noodles is beyond me,” Enston writes. “I chalk it up to the joy we seem to get from mixing names up.”

 

Belly Full is a charming, playful cookbook that uses 11 fundamental ingredients to distill the multifaceted cuisine of the Caribbean.
NonfictionArtLifestylesArt

Acts of Creation

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

British author and critic Hettie Judah’s Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood is an essential art history. With 150 color illustrations and a scope that encompasses prehistory to the present moment, this exceptional book reframes motherhood as an important position from which to make and understand art. Judah’s tight prose moves gracefully from poetic to intense to straightforward. From her first sentence, this gifted writer tackles her subject with intellectual and artistic vigor: “A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head,” she writes in the book’s introduction. It’s inspiring to read along as she tackles the long overlooked cultural figure of the artist-mother with gravitas. A chapter titled “Creation” investigates the analogy of creativity and childbearing, noting the irony of the artist-mother’s place throughout the ages: “For much of art’s history, this literal process of baby-making and nurture invalidated a woman’s status as an artist.” Contemporary art enthusiasts will be especially taken with Acts of Creation, which includes insight into heavyweights like Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, Carrie Mae Weems and more. But like any good curator, Judah has filled these pages with more obscure and under-the-radar artists, so there’s plenty to discover no matter your familiarity with art, feminism or motherhood. In a chapter called “Mothering,” Judah, with a hat-tip to the writer and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, speaks to “the radical potential of mothering as a form of expanded care,” regardless of gender or social privilege.

Hettie Judah’s insightful Acts of Creation gives motherhood its due, honoring it as an important position from which to make and understand art.
NonfictionLifestylesDesign

The Art of Gothic Living

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

In his introduction to The Art of Gothic Living: Dark Decor for the Modern Macabre, author Paul Gambino says that “Modern Gothic decor is the physical manifestation of the Goth ideology.” Just what that ideology is, however, is undoubtedly up for debate. That’s what makes Gambino’s selection of 15 different homes from three continents so intriguing: There’s extraordinary variety even in such a niche subculture. A former church in western Ohio features arched stained-glass windows and doors that open up to a cemetery directly across the road. A Tudor manor house from 1559 in Somerset, England, has a cabinet full of wax moulage heads that were previously on display in medical museums and illustrate various diseases and abnormalities. There’s even a 1,000-year-old castle in Rome that was the summer residence of two popes, Leo XII and Paul V. But this book is as much about the collections inside the homes as the homes themselves. One has shelves of antiquarian books about the occult and natural history, while another has an almost encyclopedic archive of spiritualist ephemera. Readers will also meet the curators and inhabitants of these homes. Adam and Laura, a pair of stage actors whose passion for Victorian decor was inspired by both opera and ’90s goth music, live in a third-floor walk-up apartment in New Jersey. They count among their treasures a shrunken human head from the 1930s, a sloth bear rug and a “mated pair” of taxidermied passenger pigeons. “We feel very comfortable surrounded by this decor,” Adam says. And readers will be delighted to explore such surroundings.

 

The devil is in the details in Paul Gambino’s survey of modern gothic decor, The Art of Gothic Living.
NonfictionLifestylesDesign

Parachute

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

When I first saw Parachute: Subversive Design and Street Fashion, I didn’t think I was familiar with the Montreal-based brand, which was founded by American architect Harry Parnass and British designer Nicola Pelly in the late 1970s. But after spending only a few minutes with the book, I realized I was wrong. Parachute’s influence on New Wave style was so pervasive that it was almost impossible to miss. Think about exaggerated trench coats or kimono-style jumpsuits, and you’re likely thinking of Parachute-influenced designs. Though the brand’s heyday was the ’80s, the book itself feels very current, with text in both English and French and a dynamic layout that changes from section to section. Author Alexis Walker is associate curator of dress, fashion and textiles at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal, and she presents her subject as if in a comprehensive museum archive. It’s rare to see a brand as subversive as Parachute become so influential, and the book gracefully walks the line between commerce and art. In a chapter dedicated to Parachute’s enduring, collaborative relationship with the musician Peter Gabriel, Gabriel is quoted as saying “Parachute always seemed different—smarter and highly original.” This book is that, as well.

 

The dynamic, photo-heavy Parachute shows the titular brand’s influence on fashion and culture.
NonfictionSocial ScienceLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

Both an art book and a kind of poetic herbarium, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children defies easy classification. That’s for the benefit of readers, though: Untethered to the conventions of traditional genres, writer Jamaica Kincaid is free to create something brand new, and perusing the pages feels like true discovery. Kincaid’s tone shifts from erudite to casual with a buoyancy that will make readers want to follow her thoughts through till the end. In the section that begins “O is for Orange,” Kincaid writes of the many names and etymological roots for oranges, and how the Earth is indifferent to the names we assign its fruits: “The vegetable kingdom persists and will most likely do so when we are no longer here to name and identify it.” The book’s colorful watercolors are by celebrated artist Kara Walker, and they’re treated as equal partners to Kincaid’s prose. In Walker’s hands, the illustration for poppies includes carnivalesque swirls of opium and bagels, a woman in seductive repose and a man hanging his head in despair. This niche but precious volume feels outside of time, and will be a treat to gardeners, children, artists, poets and book lovers alike.

 

Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker’s An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children will be a treat to gardeners, children, artists, poets and book lovers alike.
NonfictionPhotographyLifestylesLGBTQ+

A Sense of Shifting

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

A collaboration between writer Coco Romack and photographer Yael Malka, A Sense of Shifting: Queer Artists Reshaping Dance is a triumph of photography, dance and queer culture. Each of the book’s 12 chapters is dedicated to a specific queer dancer or dance company, and together they tell a fairly comprehensive story about the various ways that queer dance is pushing boundaries and destabilizing traditions. In Romack’s words, these dancers “embody expansive and liberatory means of existing.” In a chapter dedicated to San Francisco’s Sundance Stompede, Romack spotlights the annual four-day festival of LGBTQ+ country-western dancers with participant interviews and historical context, while Malka’s photos capture intimate moments of queer love—and plenty of cowboy boots. A chapter on Queer Butoh, a collection of performances presented by Vangeline Theater and the New York Butoh Institute, includes haunting imagery of butoh dancers as well as a cultural examination of the movement’s equally haunting genesis in postwar Japan. There’s a chapter on disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light, which includes dancers who use wheelchairs, and a chapter about the gender-expansive strip party Alejandro’s Night. One word of warning: Reading about these fascinating subjects may result in the purchase of a ticket to see them.

 

The triumphant photo-essay book A Sense of Shifting shows how queer dance is pushing boundaries and destabilizing traditions.

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