MY MOTHER'S SPICE CUPBOARD
My Mother's Spice Cupboard: A Journey from Baghdad to Bombay to Bondi (2012, Hybrid Publishers) is a memoir/history; the story of Elana's family's migration from Iraq to India to Australia, intertwined with the history of the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay.
Unlike most other Australian Jews, Elana's parents were born and grew up in Bombay, and her grandparents came from Iraq, Burma and India. Her father’s family immigrated to Sydney, her mother’s to Los Angeles, both in the 1960s. They married in Sydney and raised their family there, alongside the father’s many brothers and sisters and members of their former Bombay community. Despite being Jewish, her upbringing was greatly influenced by the food, language and culture of India, and to a lesser extent, Iraq.
My Mother's Spice Cupboard is the story of what happened to a community which no longer exists, how its members built new lives in a different country, and what it was like to grow up as one of their children. It's also about how much things have changed over four generations in one family.
Underlying the entire narrative is the importance of food and cooking, which goes beyond the mere provision of sustenance to express warmth, love and hospitality.
