But its expert execution is a true piece of editorial alchemy. “Savor” faced so many narrative obstacles that its existence is a triumph. “Savor” is certainly a collective work, spun from the willpower of a young, brown, Muslim, queer feminist who came to America seeking fame, freedom and influence, then knitted together by the people who loved her best, as well as her “hired witness.” Morrell’s voice is audible in the book’s introductory pages, and through Ali’s vantage in that scene with the doctor, but otherwise, the ghostwriter evaporates. On learning that the stranger in the room was working on a book with his patient, one doctor asked: “What’s it going to be? A book about you by a bunch of people?” For a week they talked at UCLA Medical Center’s cancer ward, interrupted occasionally by Ali’s doctors, who were trying - generally unsuccessfully, and not always gracefully - to ease her constant pain. Instead she journeyed only as far as Los Angeles to interview the chef in January 2019, in what would be the last month of Ali’s life. Morrell (the writer and founder of the food blog Lovage) braced for a “poignant but delectable voyaging,” but those plans dissolved after a sudden acceleration of Ali’s cancer. The chef had been told she had a year left to live and she wanted help from Morrell documenting how she’d live it to the fullest, working through a culinary bucket list of legendary restaurants where she wanted to eat, including Noma in Copenhagen and Osteria Francescana in Modena. Ali, 29, had Ewing’s sarcoma and had just learned her cancer was terminal. The job Morrell accepted was an exercise in the bittersweet. In late November 2018, Fatima Ali, a talented and ambitious chef from Pakistan who had been the fan favorite on the 15th and most recent season of the cooking competition television show “Top Chef,” hired the food writer Tarajia Morrell to collaborate with her on an unusual memoir. SAVOR : A Chef’s Hunger for More, by Fatima Ali with Tarajia Morrell
0 kommentar(er)
