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haley_s's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.0
This story weaves together the development of Jell-O with women's history to tell the story of how one product helped contribute to the suppression of women and their voices. Through her story and that of her mother, the author describes how these repressed emotions lead to serious health issues both for her and girls and women elsewhere. This is not what I expected from this book, but it made me think about the ways in which society never moves away from history, but finds ways to keep itself alive.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Cancer, Chronic illness, Eating disorder, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Death of parent
tyrannosaurus_reads's review
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Addiction, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Vomit
kelliebell's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Sexual assault, and Vomit
Minor: Suicide
sadpear's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Eating disorder, and Death of parent
smblanc1793's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.25
Part memoir (or memwah), part history, part feminist awakening, all suspended together in a gelatinous harmony that works…sometimes
If there is anything that saved this book, it is the writing itself. The book cycles from lyrical, to grotesque, to simple and poignant, but the prose never strays from its easy lyricism, flowing down the page as easily as a glissade of the its namesake dessert sliding down your throat.
That being said, this is not a particularly fun book. I thought, from its cover, its description, simply from the fact that it’s about Jell-O (what I see as one of the more comical foods) that this book was going to be funny. And though it did give me an occasional chuckle
“Even a Jell-O Salad can be radical if made from a sex-positive standpoint”
It was overall just overwhelmingly dour. It is a well crafted memoir, spanning 3 generations of women all encountering a host of traumas not uncommon to their eras, but it lacked a certain levity and balance I was expecting.
There were very few positive moments documented alongside the molestations, illnesses, addictions, and eating disorders, and deaths. In that respect, it felt incomplete—the dramas of a life rather than a real, fleshed out one. At least I certainly hope for the authors’ sake as well as her mother and grandmothers’ that there were more moments of levity in their lives than it seems from this text.
There is also, as one could probably parse from it’s title, or description, or even the image on its cover of a Barbie doll eerily encased like a hunk of canned fruit in the center of a Jell-O mold, a book about women. About generations of women, specific women, and—if one is to take the book at its word—women as a whole. This is where I think this book has to be taken with a grain of salt. Its sweeping denouncements and presumptions about society, womanhood, and how “the curse is patriarchy” often feel melodramatic. In its desire to be bold and unflinching, the book ends up lacking a layer or two of nuance. For although every trauma expressed in this book is deep, often heart-wrenchingly so, there is little mention of the inherent privilege possessed by its subjects, a series of rich, white women who, though facing their own Sisyphean ordeals, never wanted for financial support or faced bigotry beyond sexism.
But all that aside, I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the way it weaves stories together—the personal with the history of Jell-O itself and the town of LeRoy, the so-called LeRoy girls who inexplicably suffered Tourette’s-like fits and, according to the author’s mother,
There were very few positive moments documented alongside the molestations, illnesses, addictions, and eating disorders, and deaths. In that respect, it felt incomplete—the dramas of a life rather than a real, fleshed out one. At least I certainly hope for the authors’ sake as well as her mother and grandmothers’ that there were more moments of levity in their lives than it seems from this text.
There is also, as one could probably parse from it’s title, or description, or even the image on its cover of a Barbie doll eerily encased like a hunk of canned fruit in the center of a Jell-O mold, a book about women. About generations of women, specific women, and—if one is to take the book at its word—women as a whole. This is where I think this book has to be taken with a grain of salt. Its sweeping denouncements and presumptions about society, womanhood, and how “the curse is patriarchy” often feel melodramatic. In its desire to be bold and unflinching, the book ends up lacking a layer or two of nuance. For although every trauma expressed in this book is deep, often heart-wrenchingly so, there is little mention of the inherent privilege possessed by its subjects, a series of rich, white women who, though facing their own Sisyphean ordeals, never wanted for financial support or faced bigotry beyond sexism.
But all that aside, I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the way it weaves stories together—the personal with the history of Jell-O itself and the town of LeRoy, the so-called LeRoy girls who inexplicably suffered Tourette’s-like fits and, according to the author’s mother,
“embody the disappointment of a life in which satisfaction stems wholly from a well-manicured lawn, a well-manicured hand, well-behaved children; checking and savings accounts well balanced and safe; a perfect Jell-O salad, so light and clean and wholesome.”
It is a bold story that starts and ends with America’s most unsettling (both literally and figuratively) dessert; like the classic shape of its titular dish, this book comes full circle. It is vivid and dark and heart-wrenching, and now I know WAAAAY too much about Jell-O.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder and Mental illness
Minor: Addiction and Sexual assault