Cook Until Tender: A Memoir

Hylton, Nicole (2023) Cook Until Tender: A Memoir. Masters thesis, Northern Arizona University.

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Abstract

What are the foods of your childhood? Who do you remember cooking for you, and how did those dishes influence who you became as you grew up? These are some of the central questions of Cook Until Tender, a collection of eight creative nonfiction essays plus an introduction, each of which focuses on a particular family member and my relationship to them via the medium of food. Across all of the essays in Cook Until Tender, food is a way into much larger, thornier topics, such as love, grief, death, culture, masculinity, and socio-economic class. As the child of a restaurateur and chef, I have always had a deep connection to food. In my lifetime alone, my father has owned and operated a restaurant, a grocery store, and a commercial fishing and crabbing business. I am also of Greek and Appalachian heritage, two cultures that take cooking and eating very seriously, from feta cheese to fried bread dough. These lineages appear in the collection in “How to Love Yiayia[’s Meatballs]” and “The Provider” respectively. On a craft level, most of the essays in Cook Until Tender are written in narrative nonfiction style. Most essays are longform (10-15 pages) and written in first person from an “I” of the present day. The narrator recalls past childhood and adolescent events from the perspective of an adult several years removed. She considers family relationships and how they’ve changed from then to now. In “Like Mom Used to Make,” I explore matrilineage: what did my mom inherit from her mom, and what have I inherited from both of them? In “The Dishwasher,” I meditate on my young childhood, and how the dynamic I built with my brother has carried into our present adulthoods. Some essays—such as “Homegrown” and “The Prospect of Never”—incorporate research. “Homegrown” assesses agricultural industry practices related to tomato farming, putting my family’s backyard gardening in a broader context. “The Prospect of Never” cites medical research and science communications about Alpha-gal syndrome, a set of food allergies I was recently diagnosed with that serves as the focal point of this essay. Additionally, there are some essays where I experiment with form, tense, and point-of-view. “Papou’s Palate Cleansers” is written in list format, prefaced by a few narrative paragraphs exploring my grandfather as a character. “With Extra Chocolate Chips” alternates between the second-person pronoun “you” and the narrative voice I described previously, that of an adult looking back on past events. In contrast to the rest of the collection, which is mostly written in past tense, “The Prospect of Never” is written entirely in present tense. This decision serves two purposes: one, to more deeply engage the reader in the events that take place, and two, to give the impression that these events and their consequences are still ongoing. I limited my scope for this project to members of my immediate family (parents and brother) plus grandparents. In addition to the previously mentioned portrait style essays, there are also two pieces that look inward: “Homegrown” and “The Prospect of Never.” “Homegrown” examines how I see myself as a member of my family unit through the lens of gardening and tomatoes. “The Prospect of Never” is a re-evaluation of myself and my worldviews after I’m diagnosed with Alpha-gal syndrome. In addition to personal lived experience, a number of books I’ve read over the last several years have influenced my creation of this project. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is a contemporary counterpart, especially given that book’s investigations of ethnicity and culture, complicated relationships with one’s parents, and how to cope with grief from the loss of a loved one to major illness. Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley is a graphic memoir that also examines relationships with one’s parents as well as larger social forces like feminism and sexuality, which have long been major themes in my writing. And even though it’s a novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg was a landmark book for me in learning how to use food to tell family and queer stories. Throughout my time in the MFA, I’ve taken a number of courses that prepared me for this project. Most obvious would be Creative Nonfiction Workshop with KT Thompson and The History of Life Writing with Laura Gray-Rosendale. These courses were invaluable in shaping my knowledge of creative nonfiction as a craft and as a genre. But looking back, the most central course for this project was Climate Science Writing with Nicole Walker. During this class, I had a revelation that would eventually lead me to write Cook Until Tender. I realized that creative nonfiction can be about anything, even the mundane. I used to think that writing about my family or my life would be boring to read. Everyone has a grandma; what makes my grandma unique, really? But as Charles Baxter wrote in an article for Biographile, “You don’t have to set a Chevrolet on fire or have someone murdered on the first page to get the reader’s attention…The truth about a situation is always big enough to sustain someone’s attention.” In memoir, the small, everyday moments are what matter, because they can lead into larger truths and bigger questions. This has been my approach with Cook Until Tender: begin with something relatable and ordinary—what’s more ordinary than something you do roughly three times a day?—and use this as a springboard into something deeper.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Publisher’s Statement:	© Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
Keywords:	cooking; creative nonfiction; essay; family; food; memoir; Short-stories, American
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English
NAU Depositing Author Academic Status:	Student
Department/Unit:	Graduate College > Theses and Dissertations College of Arts and Letters > English
Date Deposited:	12 May 2025 22:01
Last Modified:	12 May 2025 22:01
URI:	https://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/6134

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