Female Nomad and Friends: Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World
Female Nomad and Friends: Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World
In 1987, Rita, newly divorced, set out to live her dream. She sold all her possessions and became a nomad. She wrote a book about her ongoing journey and, in 2001, insisted on putting her personal e-mail address in the last chapter—against all advice. It turned out to be a fortuitous decision. She has met thousands of readers, stayed in their homes, and sat around kitchen tables sharing stories and food and laughter. In this essay collection, Gelman includes her own further adventures,
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Women the world over are made up of the same ingredients, it’s how they are blended that mark who they are,
Connection is the self-proclaimed theme of Rita Golden Gelman’s life. She hearkens back to a time of yore by calling herself a modern-day nomad. In Female Nomad and Friends, she is in hunter-gather mode collecting recipes from around the globe via submissions to her website. They are meticulously blended with real-life stories of 41 women who take a leap of faith and reach out to another human being – whether across town or across the world. Every hint of zest is appreciated and recognized in this culinary community of over 25 ethnic dishes.
Golden Gelman upped the ante even further by donating all of the proceeds of the book to a scholarship fund. It will enable high school graduates in the slums of India to attend vocational schools. The funds are being administered through a Maryland chapter of the Rotary Club. With a soul full of wanderlust, she may not have a permanent address, but Golden Gelman certainly does not equate the absence of hearth and home with a lack of responsibility.
The book is divided into five sections: Connecting, Mixed Messages, Language, Passion and Food. The recipes range from the familiar – Grandma’s fried chicken – to the exotic – sun-dried worms. However, the downright peculiar are thankfully omitted (Filipino head of the dog, anyone?).
Among the accompanying stories, there are several stand-outs. One woman experiences the ultimate in hospitality when an elderly woman offers to carry her on her back across a flooded Vietnamese street. Another answers a want ad for a housekeeper and discovers a lonely Alaskan looking for a wife. A Swedish exchange student experiences her first Thanksgiving, Texas-style. An American schoolteacher in France is invited to the sumptuous table of her student’s family. An orphaned Iraqi girl makes a connection with an American woman before and after the 2003 invasion. A visiting couple who miss their ferry stop are rowed upstream against the current by a kind native in Paraguay.
However, many dangers exist for women traveling alone, and these perils are not ignored. One woman is raped by a hotel manager in India and later returns home to discover that she is pregnant. Another drinks the water on a South Pacific island and succumbs to dysentery.
Overall, women the world over are made up of the same ingredients, it’s how they are blended that mark who they are.
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|Delightful and inspiring,
This compilation of stories from a variety of international female authors coalesces around the theme of breaking bread with new and different people. It is a warm and wonderful invitation to travel, explore, reach out, and live life fully and completely. The pieces are short and vary in tone across the emotional spectrum from funny to sad, charming to thought-provoking, and all points in between. The recipes are bonus material that allows you to replicate some of the delicious centerpieces for these gatherings, but the real joy is in the tales themselves and the worlds that are revealed when these courageous and joyful ladies call us to share in food and humanity.
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|Go. Eat. Write.,
Food. Travel. Vignettes gathered from here, there, everywhere. Perfect for those of us who only have a scattered minute or two to read every day. One of the things I liked about Female Nomads is that while it might loosely fall in to the genre of “travel memoir”, because each small essay is totally self-contained, and because they were crafted by various authors (and non-authors) and even a few male nomads, the book remained fresh from the first page to the last. I would have loved more recipes, though the ones included were almost as entertaining as the stories themselves.
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