Reading about an unknown person’s childhood may make some individuals think “I don’t care about your life, why should I read you?” This was the predicament that Mahdur Jaffrey had to face. When I finished her book Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India, I realized that Jaffrey wasn’t able to write a memoir—she was able to paint a world. I didn’t feel like I was reading a narration of events. I felt like a world was unfolding right before my eyes. The gastronomic and vivid narration elevated her ordinary life and transformed that life into a masterpiece filled with incredible sensations. As I read her description of Indian food, my mouth tingled in anticipation for the next ingedient, my appetite stimulated by each descriptive word.
