Notes on a Banana

A FINALIST FOR THE NEW ENGLAND BOOK AWARD FOR NON FICTION A PASTE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF TIMEOUT NEW YORK'S BEST SUMMER BEACH READS OF 2017 ONE OF REAL SIMPLE'S 25 FATHER'S DAY BOOKS THAT COVER ALL OF DAD'S INTERESTS The stunning and long-awaited memoir from the beloved founder of the James Beard Award-winning website Leite's Culinaria--a candid, courageous, and at times laugh-out-loud funny story of family, food, mental illness, and sexual identity. Born into a family of Azorean immigrants, David Leite grew up in the 1960s in a devoutly Catholic, blue-collar, food-crazed Portuguese home in Fall River, Massachusetts. A clever and determined dreamer with a vivid imagination and a flair for the dramatic, "Banana" as his mother endearingly called him, yearned to live in a middle-class house with a swinging kitchen door just like the ones on television, and fell in love with everything French, thanks to his Portuguese and French-Canadian godmother. But David also struggled with the e