The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster
The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster
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The Meth Lunches
Food and Longing in an American City

Author: Kim Foster

Narrator: Sara Sheckells

Unabridged: 12 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/10/2023


Synopsis

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table—eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the complex reality when poverty and food intersect.

Whether it's heirloom vegetables or a block of neon-yellow government cheese, food is both a basic necessity and a nuanced litmus test: what and how we eat reflects our communities, our cultures, and our place in the world. The Meth Lunches gives a glimpse into the lives of people living in Foster's Las Vegas community—the grocery store cashier who feels safer surrounded by food after surviving a childhood of hunger; the inmate baking a birthday cake with coffee creamer and Sprite; the unhoused woman growing scallions in the slice of sunlight on her passenger seat. This is what food looks like in the lives of real people.

The Meth Lunches reveals stories of dysfunction intertwined with hope, of the insurmountable obstacles and fierce determination all playing out on the plates of ordinary Americans. It's a bold invitation to pull up a chair and reconsider our responsibilities to the most vulnerable among us. Welcome to the table.

About Kim Foster

Kim Foster is a James Beard Award-winning food writer. She writes about people at the intersection of food and mental illness, family separation, poverty, addiction, trauma, and incarceration. You can read her work on her weekly newsletter, on her website, and on Twitter and Instagram. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her husband, David, their four kids, and many animals.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Catherine on October 30, 2023

**Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Kim Foster for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 10.10!** "Hunger is not a problem. It is an obscenity. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank Kim Foster's Las Vegas co......more

Goodreads review by Dona's on January 28, 2024

Thank you to the author Kim Foster, publishers St. Martin's Press, and also to NetGalley, for a digital copy of THE METH LUNCHES. All views are mine. This is a staggeringly good book. Connecting the issues of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and child welfare services to food, perhaps our mos......more

Goodreads review by AndiReads on May 03, 2023

This is now an all time favorite, and maybe a book that might change the trajectory of my life - it is THAT good. In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster pulls back the facade to reveal contemporary hunger in America. Foster is known as the Las Vegas-based writer who won the prestigious James Beard Foundati......more

Goodreads review by Melissa on February 14, 2023

*This book was received as an Advanced Reviewer's Copy from NetGalley. Within the first half of the first chapter, I was convinced I was going to dislike this book. I had an inward groan as I thought it was going to be centered around performative altruism and inauthentic. I am ever so glad that it c......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on February 17, 2023

As a sociologist, writer, and former homeless woman this book gave me all the feelings. It is a wonderful first hand telling of poverty culture. The rules are different for people who have been on the streets. They often team up for a short time to survive. They push boundaries and they act entitled......more