What's stuffed cabbage got to do with it?
Martha Anne Toll
Writer: THREE MUSES, a novel, finalist for the Gotham Book Prize and winner of the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, available wherever books are sold. DUET FOR ONE, second novel, coming spring 2025.
I don’t remember tasting MomMom’s stuffed cabbage. My beloved grandmother died when I was in fifth grade. But somewhere along the way, I asked Auntie Char for MomMom’s recipe, which I consider a prized family heirloom.?
We belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Recently, we received two ginormous heads of Chinese cabbage. It occurred to me that those leaves would work better for MomMom’s recipe than the heads of cabbage we usually buy in our super market.
The process made me a believer that smell is the most evocative of the senses. I was flung back to the old country (Odessa), pot simmering, house filled with an intensely familiar smell that must have crossed continents and centuries, because I have no memory of eating stuffed cabbage as a child. I felt like I was hearing (or smelling) the ancestors.?
In my forthcoming novel,?Three Muses, stuffed cabbage makes an appearance with the intent of evoking memories for the protagonist, John Curtin. I hadn’t made stuffed cabbage for years at the time I wrote that scene, so I was tickled to learn that making it in real life had such a powerful effect.
My interview with?Jai Chakrabarti?about his beautiful new novel, was just published. I wrote that “A Play for the End of the World?is a love story that knits together a Warsaw Ghetto survivor with a play by Rabindranath Tagore. Chakrabarti’s debut novel explores Nazi horrors; the deracination experienced by refugees; and oppressive, deadly politics in India; all set against a tender and improbable love affair.” Yep, I’m definitely recommending it.
Sending love to all of you,
Martha
P.S. ICYMI, here’s my?last newsletter: “Saying good-bye to our piano.”
Hi Martha Anne, I so love your posts and newsletters. You do. have an uncanny knack of exploring beautiuful and mundane things and brand new intelligent ideas.