Available now: An episodic, story-centered coffee table book by Doris Friedensohn that will grab readers with mini-dramas and showcase what’s best about our Food Service Training Academy.
The following is a conversation about COOKING FOR CHANGE with Doris Friedensohn:
1. How did you learn about the Community FoodBank of New Jersey?
In 2003, while writing a food memoir, I was struck by the choices that marked my life as an eater. On a regular basis, I enjoyed authentic dishes from a dozen countries while buying couscous, organic vegetables, and whatever else struck my fancy at Whole Foods. In the midst of this abundance, I found myself thinking about people whose choices are shaped by a limited budget, Mc Donald’s, and inner city bodegas. Some of them live only a few minutes from my house in the suburbs. How were they managing? A friend suggested that I visit the FoodBank in Hillside where the fight against hunger is an everyday concern. I got the tour, the statistics and a view of volunteers sorting contributed canned goods. I also had an eye-opening conversation with the Executive Chef of the Food Service Training Academy. “You’re welcome to drop in any time,” the chef said. I did, and soon enough, I was hooked.
2. Hooked, how?
What lured you back to the FSTA week after week over the course of seven years? In brief, dramas of discovery, surprise, and hope. For almost four decades, I was a college professor specializing in contemporary American culture. At the FoodBank on the edge of Newark, I felt like a visitor to another country, which happens, sadly, to be my own. In that place, food service trainees have been my amazing teachers: open about their painful histories, gritty neighborhoods and thwarted hopes; but also eager to believe that there is a second chance for them in our fabled Land of Opportunity. I want them to be right.
3. Does job training work?
Certainly. But not for everyone. About 50% of those who begin at the FSTA graduate. That’s better than the graduation rate at most community colleges. Today’s FSTA graduates face a very tight job market. But they are encouraged by two trends: first, the hospitality industry continues to grow; and second, the low paying jobs they’ve trained for won’t be outsourced and machines won’t replace them – at least not quite yet.
4. What’s the most important lesson food service students learn?
It’s all about attitude: about wanting the training, staying focused, trying hard, and not fighting one’s teachers. Talent, while gorgeous, is less important than perseverance.
5. How do you choose your subjects?
I look for individuals who are willing to reflect on their lives. But I shy away from those who think they have their story all figured out and just want someone who will publish it. I listen for a distinctive voice, an unusual history. People who tolerate uncertainty get my attention.
6. The book features more than 40 black and white photos. How do they figure in the work as a whole?
Photographer Steve Riskind finds poetry in the kitchen — in the gestures, urgencies, and dreamy possibilities around which students and staff bond. At some moments, Riskind is a dramatist who’s finely tuned to conflict; at other moments he’s an ironist who sees life as a sequence of shrugs and giggles, extreme efforts and failed connections. His bold, evocative portraits speak volumes.
7. What’s your favorite story?
It’s easy to love a winner — a person driven to achieve after a long history, say, of incarceration or addiction. And I do. Cooking for Change celebrates many of these heroic figures. But I’m haunted by some of the failures: individuals with enormous obstacles to overcome and limited personal and social resources. Their stories give me pause. Even with generous support from the FSTA, some students can’t manage what life dishes out. And some graduates return to the routines and circumstances they had been struggling to leave behind. Structures of inequality and racism run deep in America; and the human will, in key moments, is inadequate to the struggle.
8. What do you want readers to take away from COOKING FOR CHANGE?
First, individuals surprise us at every turn. Some of the most successful FSTA graduates are those with overwhelming odds against them. Second, it’s harder than ever to be poor and unemployed in America. Job training opportunities, such as those provided by the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, function like life rafts in an angry sea. Some individuals grab hold. Thanks to the FSTA, they get a second (or third) chance to regroup. I want readers, who are also voters and policy makers, to support their best efforts in an unjust world.
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