Print edition: 
"Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen" by Donia Bijan (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 250 pages, $19.95)
"My mother cooked because it made her happy, and when you sat at her table, you shared her happiness."
So Iranian immigrant Donia Bijan describes her mother's idea of food, which influenced her own so much that she became a chef. And this was a great disappointment to her father, who ran his own hospital in Iran and who wanted her to become a doctor as well, or another professional, but not, as he put it, a "cook."
Bijan explores the complex relationship between food, family and culture in her memoir "Maman's Homesick Pie," which is part immigrant story, part family drama and part paean to fine food.
Bijan's family was forced to flee Iran after the fall of the Shah in the 1970s. Coming to America with barely any possessions, the family strove to find a new life in California. Bijan's mother dove into American cuisine, learning to cook Thanksgiving dinners and other traditionally American foods while also making old favorites with bountiful California produce (including persimmons taken from neighborhood trees when it was clear they were just being left to rot).
Bijan, a teenager when she first arrived, struggled to fit in, blend in, belong — tougher when the country you come from is hostile to the one you've moved to, easier when you're younger and without an already established career, as she discovers through her father's own struggles and eventual return to Iran.
In college, Bijan can't escape the pull of food, and goes on to cooking school in France, finally opening her own restaurant back in California.
The memoir smoothly combines stories of Bijan's childhood in Iran and transition to life in America with pieces of her parents' lives, and the family's migrations after the loss of their homeland. They aren't stories of horrible hardships and grand triumphs; rather, they are the quietly compelling stories of an ordinary family dealing with extraordinary circumstances.
Memories of family are inextricably linked to food — the smells, the flavors, the look and feel of a dish — and Bijan brings foods both mundane and exotic to life in the pages. Thirty recipes are included in the book: Persian specialties, French dishes that she learned in Paris, American favorites like pot roast. They all look like things it would make you happy to cook.
If you go
Donia Bijan book-signing
What: Reading, book-signing and food with chef and author Donia Bijan, author of "Maman's Homesick Pie"
Where: Watermark Books, 4701 E. Douglas
When: 7 p.m. Friday
How much: Free
For more information, call 316-682-1181.
