House Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Exhibiting Up—and What We Make When We Make Dinner, Liz Hauck, Random Home Books, 9780525512431, 2021, 376 pages, $27.00 hardback.
I’ll admit, once I first picked up this ebook, I used to be skeptical. The firsthand account of a white instructor as she runs a cooking program at a bunch residence with primarily Black and Latinx boys appeared prime for savior complexes and condescension. I’m thrilled to say that I used to be flawed. This ebook is transferring, and I couldn’t put it down. We open on Hauck navigating the latest loss of life of her father, who served as a workers member at “The Home” for many years. The Home is a facility for male youth not within the custody of their households. Within the depth of her grief, Hauck finds herself remembering the various meals she and her father ready collectively and the way he believed meals was key to human connection.
Hauck herself admits she isn’t certain if she started this system to serve the adolescents or to really feel nearer to her father. I think it’s a bit of of each. She arrives at The Home with groceries and recipes in tow each week to get pleasure from an hour of cooking and an hour of consuming with the teenagers. With out realizing it, Hauck embraces the social work worth of self-determination complete heartedly. The boys she works with determined the menu every week. They don’t seem to be required to prepare dinner, and they’re at all times welcome to ask friends to the desk.
Conversations about race are frank and direct on this ebook. Hauck listens to the Black and Latinx teenagers discuss being stopped by police for strolling down the road, and the way they’re handled in juvenile detention facilities or prisons. She shortly arrives at introspection about her whiteness and notion of police. Most of the teenagers on this ebook are incarcerated on the finish, and Hauck displays on this readily.
After we start social work, there are sudden challenges. I name them “tiny heartbreaks,” they usually usually go hand in hand with disillusionment. Studying as Hauck navigates a number of of those was tough, and I usually wished to climb into the ebook to help. Probably the most transferring tiny heartbreak she faces occurs when a number of of the boys she’s working with by no means return to the home. Who amongst us doesn’t have a consumer we nonetheless surprise about? It’s a singular form of grief and fear that Hauck wrestles with all through the ebook.
Hauck’s writing in regards to the wrecking lack of her father is poignant, trustworthy, and painful. She speaks to the various completely different little pains that include grief. Forgetting for moments that they’re gone and going to name them. Excited about arguments or points that may by no means be resolved now. Calling their voicemail field repeatedly to listen to their voices. Hauck covers all of those, softening the reader with childhood reminiscences or reminiscing about her father’s quirks.
General, I like to recommend this ebook. Whether or not you’re a veteran social employee or a beginner, you’ll discover worth right here. In any case, all of us should eat, and Hauck makes you are feeling welcome at her desk.
Reviewed by Libby Trammell (she/her/hers), Missouri LMSW, Program Supervisor, Therapeutic Motion.
