Elissa Altman Books

Elissa Altman crafts deeply resonant narratives exploring the profound connections between food, memory, and identity. Through her writing, she delves into how simple meals and the rituals of cooking shape our relationships and our understanding of ourselves. Her style is introspective and poetic, often plumbing the complexities of family ties and the search for belonging. Altman writes about food as a language of love, care, and connection, revealing universal human desires through the lens of culinary experience.

Motherland
272 pages
10 hours of reading
3.8(791)Add rating
Rita, an overreaching, makeup-addicted, narcissistic Manhattan singer couldn't be more different from Elissa, her gay, taciturn New England writer daughter. Stuck in an outrageous maelstrom of codependency, mother and daughter cannot seem to extricate themselves from the center of each other's lives. This is their story, built on the ferocity of mother-daughter love, moral obligation, and the possibility and promise of healing. -- adapted from publisher info
Treyf
287 pages
11 hours of reading
In this kaleidoscopic memoir, Elissa Altman tells the story of tradition, expectations, religion and rule-breaking that defined her childhood, from the dinner table to the synagogue to the bedrooms of her apartment building. Spanning from 1940s wartime Brooklyn to 1960s and '70s Queens to present day rural New England, Treyf is a story of contradiction, hope, betrayal and one family's relentless yearning for acceptance; it is a vivid tale of what it means to find yourself both in spite of, and in honour to, your past.

Motherland

Treyf