My immigrant parents, while bestowing upon me the gift of worldliness, with their accents and many passports and the ease with which they code-switched, yelling at one another in English, German, Italian, and Russian, left a glaring omission in my childhood: there was no Americana. It was not that America itself was absent from my…
I spend a lot of time trying to make sense of things in my world. I’m often looking for explanations when there aren’t any, and inevitably find myself frustrated by the lack of answers. Why does Rand leave his shirt and jeans on the ground next to bed, stretched out, as though someone had been…
The refrain I’ve heard again and again among American travelers over the last six months has been this: “Time to pretend we’re Canadian.” That seems to be the best way to avoid having to explain, well, anything that’s going on in our country. We can gently maneuver around any awkward conversations about the demise of…
Being an American on the road, you often become an ambassador of sorts for your country and culture, and I find myself answering a lot of questions from friends, family, and the occasional well-meaning stranger about the U.S. And while these questions usually run the gamut from pop to culture (No, I don’t know why…
My book came out yesterday. It is out there floating in the world, while I sit at home in my pjs eating cake and repeating the words “I am an author” to myself over and over again. To be fair, I have been doing this weekly since I was 8, but now it carries with…
“What’s the hardest part about writing a book?” I’ve been asked this question a lot lately, and my answer is what you’d expect: figuring out which darlings to fight for and which to cut, weaving a cohesive narrative, and finding an author bio photo of me that doesn’t have obscene words in the background.…
By the time we land in Seattle, I am tired of people asking about the contents of the plastic toolbox. Both Rand and I have carried it from my father’s tiny Bavarian village to Munich to Amsterdam and now home, each of us now acutely aware of how ill-suited a container it is for transportation.…
Islamophobia has, understandably, been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve been watching as it slowly spreads across America – perhaps it’s always been around, just under the surface, but in recent months, with the election of our new President, it’s come to a rolling boil. He has villified Americans and foreigners alike, accused the…
My agent was the first to tell me my memoir would be available in audiobook. At the time, I couldn’t imagine that too many people would consume my book by listening to it. It’s a book! It’s supposed to be read! On pages! Perhaps even paper ones. But audiobook books have steadily been making a rise,…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
In Hardback, e-book, and audiobook from these booksellers:
