"History, I was learning, is the story we tell ourselves about what really happened. My task as a writer/novelist was …"

"The pies browned, the pastries puckered in the cavernous oven I waited to open."

"Gloved with two potholders, I listened while she told me not long ago a girl could not marry until she could roll her…"

"I dreamed of stretching my pastry dough out to cover the earth with a crust so fine my love would think it was nothin…"

"The tarragon dotted the rice in the cauldron. And now, as if signaled, the spice jars popped open, unladened their fa…"

"...the aunts stopped in in the middle of swallows, heads cocked... as if they had heard ...their own baby crying. It …"

"The uncles ate seconds and rose in a chorus ...empty plates glowed like the eyes of the spellbound."

"I remember the whirr and whine of her black Singer, the gold traceries on the cast iron rod by the wheel that lifted …"

"threading her needles, winding her threads; the spools sat in their rods in the sewing box, ends tucked in the notch …"

"Mine was an oral culture, full of storytellers, but reading and writing were not encouraged. (No public libraries, no…"