{"product_id":"2940170124725","title":"Notes on a Banana: A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe stunning and long-awaited memoir from the beloved founder of the James Beard Award-winning website Leite's Culinaria-a candid, courageous, and at times laugh-out-loud funny story of family, food, mental illness, and sexual identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn into a family of Azorean immigrants, David Leite grew up in the 1960s in a devoutly Catholic, blue-collar, food-crazed Portuguese home in Fall River, Massachusetts. A clever and determined dreamer with a vivid imagination and a flair for the dramatic, \"Banana\" as his mother endearingly called him, obsessed over proper hair care, yearned to live in a middle-class house with a swinging kitchen door like the ones on television, and fell in love with everything French, thanks to his Portuguese and French-Canadian godmother. But David also struggled with the emotional devastation of bipolar disorder. Until he was diagnosed in his mid-thirties, David found relief from his wild mood swings in cooking, Julia Child, and a Viking stove he named \"Thor.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNotes on a Banana\u003c\/em\u003e is his heartfelt, unflinchingly honest, yet tender memoir of growing up, accepting himself, and turning his love of food into an award-winning career. Reminiscing about the people and events that shaped him, David looks back at the highs and lows of his life: from his rejection of being gay and his attempt to \"turn straight\" through Aesthetic Realism, a cult in downtown Manhattan, to becoming a writer, cookbook author, and web publisher, to his twenty-three-year relationship with Alan, known to millions of David's readers as \"The One,\" which began with (what else?) food. Woven throughout these stories are the dishes David loves-the tastes that led him to happiness, health, and success.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA blend of Kay Redfield Jamison's \u003cem\u003eAn Unquiet Mind\u003c\/em\u003e, the food memoirs of Ruth Reichl, Anthony Bourdain, and Gabrielle Hamilton, and the character-rich storytelling of Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, and Jenny Lawson, \u003cem\u003eNotes on a Banana\u003c\/em\u003e is a feast that dazzles, delights, and, ultimately, heals.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HarperCollins Publishers","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47179327045872,"sku":"2940170124725","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940170124725_p0.jpg?v=1769903865","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940170124725","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}