Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays
by Phoebe Robinson
978-0-593-18490-5 (copyright 2021) published by Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House
This is a book of essays written during the pandemic lockdown, starting with an essay about that slap in the face that was March 2020, when we all realized what was happening and the panic set in. Robinson jokes about the myriad responses, from those who put society as a whole above themselves to those who pushed and trod over the infirm to get to their next roots appointment at the hair salon. While some people were struggling to get toilet paper, others were on social media cooking up recipes in their chef’s kitchens and taking selfies by their private pools. Not only all that, there were serious differences between Black and brown experiences and those of the non-marginalized members of society during those trying times, and that’s how the scene is set for the rest of the book. There’s the relatable stuff, and there’s all the rest. That year that we all thought was going to be a fresh, beautiful start to the rest of our charmed lives, ended up being a shitstorm of fear and disappointment, as if climate change, racism, and war wasn’t enough, there was pandemic. In some regard, it’s ended up not being a time of action so much as a time of tattered sweatpants and small victories. But this book doesn’t attempt to reconcile us with all that. It’s just a book written in a time of paralysis and its intent is to bring levity to gravity. Maybe while you read the book, you’ll engross in a bit of enjoyment and then when the covers close, you’ll be ready to take those first fragile steps back into real life. Because despite the time capsule of Covid, Robinson shows we’ve actually been living our real lives all along.
Robinson talks at length about a few topics that are the main tenets of her own life, such as her career and brand building, quarantining with her boyfriend, the Black and brown experience, and waxing poetic about her life choices and past experiences. The book feels like it’s set in real time, with occasional references to writing her book as she’s writing it. A bit rambling at times, in a charming way, it’s written with the cadence of a friend chatting to you over the phone. It’s evident how seriously she takes her writing and her work. She describes her work ethic of steel, doubling down on the hardest jobs and taking on more. That energy is infectious and she’ll tap into the entrepreneurial spirit of her readers, walking through her strategies as a badass lady boss. She’s a Black lady boss, in particular, and it’s important to have voices that speak to that and provide representation for others. She talks about her journey creating Tiny Reparations Production Company and Tiny Reparations Books (the company she runs and the imprint that publishes this memoir). She navigated being a Black boss without ever having witnessed one herself, and she created a company run by and for Black people, respecting both the education and buying power of the Black population. She shares some of her valuable lessons as an empire builder, such as understanding that employers are there for a paycheck, not to follow someone else’s dream; it’s important to delegate and be decisive; and have fun but also get a lawyer and learn to manage your finances. Robinson provides the business lessons she learned the hard way, by doing, and lets us all in on it with her joyful sense of adventure and humor. Like a good pal, not only will she encourage you to build the empire of your dreams, she’ll make you giggle about its ups and downs.
She spent the pandemic cohabiting with her boyfriend whom she refers to as “British Baekoff” or “Bae.” She knew it was love when the relationship progressed from eating gross food in front of him to becoming completely open about bathroom indignities and wholly accepting each other’s annoying habits. She’ll not only teach you what she knows about building an empire but she’ll tell you about the business of realizing you’ve met your soulmate. Also, as Robinson teaches Bae, her white, British boyfriend about the highlights of Black, American pop culture, the reader vicariously goes on that funny ride.
She also talks about her decision not to have children. Despite that most of her childhood was spent carrying around a doll that she didn’t care was decapitated, she grew up accepting the socially engrained idea that having kids was a woman’s destiny. Her essay about choosing not to be a mother cuts deep into the myths and realities of motherhood with hilarious clarity and promotes the idea that while motherhood is great for some, what should really be celebrated is a woman’s choice to be the architect of her own life’s trajectory. In her deeply personal essay about her decision not to have children, despite scrutiny, she shares with readers who may connect with her experience that women have worth in all kinds of other ways. But this essay translates to other relatable things, like learning not to compare yourself to everyone on social media and feeling like you’re not sizing up to what society expects. She cautions readers not to scrutinize themselves and feel damaged just for going against the grain. Everyone has to decide their own vision and follow that faithfully and, if you do, you’ll end up on the journey meant for you. She also conveys the concept of how nice it is to be supported by like-minded people in a world of diversity.
This book is also an eloquent disquisition on race in America. Woven throughout all her tales is her perspective on American culture as it relates to her own experiences but also the Black and brown experience in general. The essays cover heavier issues such as white savior complex and performative allyship during and after the scarring civil rights violations against Black people during the summer of 2020 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Robinson powerfully reminds readers that equality isn’t just a social media post, that notions of “progress” are routinely condescended, and that there is a significant way to go towards ending systemic racism. In addition to race relations and career empowerment, one of her best chapters is on the power and culture of Black hair styles. Her essay is rich with historical information and personal identity.
In a ramble of hilarious anecdotes, she weaves together lessons learned from her parents, her neurotic inner monologue before sex, and her very relatable and charming list of “Phoebe-isms” to live by, such as not sitting on her bed in your outside clothes. One of her concluding essays is on the commercialization of the self-care industry run amuck during the traumatic year of 2020. She discussed navigating ways to actually find mental and physical peace without being manipulated by technology-aided advertising into always feeling the need for self-improvement. She discovers having a sense of community is a defining factor for her. She goes on various rants about life’s indignities, from the pressures that society puts on us to the pressures we put on ourselves and she tells the reader kindly, “I see the scars and they are healing” (p55).
Even readers not familiar with her career will find book endearing and want to read more.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly: Updated Edition
by Anthony Bourdain
978-0-0608-9922-6 (copyright 2000) published by Ecco, and Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers
This is the ground-breaking memoir of the late, beloved chef, author, TV personality, and globe-trotter, Anthony Bourdain. Despite the explosion in recent years of celebrity chefs and TV foodie programs, this scintillating exposé of the culinary world is superbly written, and it stands the test of time as a classic.
Written by the now famous and infamous Anthony Bourdain, readers get a sneak peek into professional kitchens — without filter — by way of Bourdain’s sharp tongue, intelligence, and wit. Imagine the storyteller with cigarette in mouth, white jacket on, eyes locked, and leaning in. He describes his incredible personal drive to become a master in the kitchen, whether he recognized it as that at the time or not, starting by nostalgically recounting his upbringing in France, where his palate was awakened to sophisticated international cuisine. This foreshadowed the same intrepid curiosity and hunger for culinary perfection and adventure that would later be revisited when Bourdain talks about his visit to Les Halles Toyko and his time spent wandering the streets in search of the undiscovered. He talks about his first days working in the lowest positions at a dive in Provincetown, to his experience earning his way through a degree at the Culinary Institute of America, and to inventing exciting new culinary techniques in a bold entrepreneurial catering business venture.
The introduction to the book is relatable even to those outside the culinary world. It states that the book is simply about a guy who followed a career path that was challenging, but he did it because it felt like a calling. And yet his calling, his story, even years after it has become mainstream, is so fantastical, because he was a trailblazer for documenting it all. Waking in the early hours of the morning before another 17 hour shift and sitting at the typewriter, he pulled the curtain back, revealing the secrets that lurk right behind every kitchen door. He crafted a genius insider look at the life of a chef before there was such a thing as a celebrity chef — and he captured countless hearts with his daring passion for food and gripping, tactile storytelling. His mission with the book was to transport the reader into his special world, behind-the-scenes of the kitchen as a whole, and he did that.
But it’s not all adventure and misadventure. In keeping with his claim that the book is actually intended specifically for other chefs to read, he truly provides the lay of the land. There is a whole chapter on knives and other kitchen staples, along with some basic cooking techniques. That chapter might be a little tedious were it not for all the home chefs now who will read it like gospel. There is a long, hilarious guide to multi-lingual kitchen lingo and insider terms of endearment for the equipment and various tasks and commands of the kitchen. He passes along the advice of all his hard-earned lessons in the restaurant business. He knows every trick of the trade and lays bare which will help you survive and which will get you killed. Chefs and foodies alike will delight that the book is chock full of details about all the figures and influences he mingled with in the NY culinary scene, some familiar, some foreign. To read the book is truly to escape into Bourdain’s workaholic world.
He talks about the psychology of food – eating it and wanting to serve it. He explains the masochistic tendencies and insanely inflated ego of the kind of person who wants to open a restaurant. He gives a glimpse into that frenetic, precarious world, telling the reader in loving detail about his mentor who showed him true grit and inspired him to follow his instincts towards success. He talks with brutal clarity not just about his mentors but all the intense bonds he created along the way. The characters who comprise every kitchen he describes range from sweet to insane to downright thuggish. One could argue that even the candor and reverence with which Bourdain describes the personalities of kitchen staff is endearing in all its forms, but it would be hard to deny his penchant for the motley, sleep-deprived, highly volatile, knife-wielding forms.
Bourdain describes how he spent a couple of years working at the Rainbow Room in New York, during which time he had no life outside of the daily grind. The restaurant was like a well-oiled bootcamp for learning to serve scores of people with exacting repetition. No glamour involved. He frequently references his time at Supper Club and Les Halles in New York, where he found a home for many years. In some ways, he describes kitchen ethics like the Wild West, anything goes as long as the plate is impeccable and served on cue. In other ways he describes it through rigid codes of conduct, militant cleanliness, and team work. The kitchen is described as a submarine-like space with dangers at every turn. As such, he describes the chef’s station like an extension of the nervous system. There are known rhythms and actions to the organism and an environment that perpetuates survival only with adaptation.
For the bulk of the book, Bourdain describes working at various well- and lesser-known restaurants that have dotted the New York landscape over the years — navigating the successes and failures of those ventures, and gathering savvy all the while navigating his own personal ups and downs. He recounts tales of helping new restaurateurs, and of sabotaging them. He’s candid about the grueling, often violent, nature of kitchen work and business, and about how taxing it is on the body, not the least of which is because of rampant drug use from weed to cocaine to heroin. The kitchen is a place for tattoos, scorch marks, lacerations, rashes, and other skin wounds. Life in the kitchen is full of battle scars, mental and physical, with permanent gnarls, callouses, blotches, and amputations. He somehow maintains this as a price worth paying to work in a kitchen. Each plate of food is a reminder of the worth of the journey. And it goes without saying the book is abundantly full of passionately described dishes, from the simple to the complex. And the reader starts to viscerally understand, like an electric charge through the spine, that the energy of a well-oiled kitchen plays like an orchestra at crescendo.
One of the most fascinating and fun chapters is his warning list of do’s and don’t’s for consumers. He spills some major beans. He suggests never to order fish on a Monday because it’s probably on the verge of expiring after the high turn-over of the weekend stock. When a restaurant presents you with a “special,” it’s actually clearance of food about to expire. Never order mussels. Never order “well-done” or meat and fish covered in sauce. Never, ever order hollandaise. Table bread is recycled from other tables about 50% of the time. The secrets go on and on and you’ll have to read the book to delight and fear in them all.
Despite that celebrity chefs are more common since the book was first published and kitchens have somewhat cleaned up their acts, the behind-the-scenes grit of this book remains jarringly evergreen and true. Bourdain didn’t just write his own life in vivid detail, he transcended it, and wrote universally about the life of anyone who works in a professional kitchen. No reader will eat at a restaurant again without thinking of the relationship between the food and the good souls who prepared it.
The Updated Edition contains additional postscript material by and about Bourdain.