Kate Moses talks about “Cakewalk” | Palo Alto

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Local author Kate Moses talks about Cakewalk, a funny, touching memoir of a crummy childhood. From the author of the internationally acclaimed and rapturously reviewed Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath comes a funny, touching memoir of a crummy — and crumby – childhood. Written by a self-taught baker and born raconteur, Cakewalk tells the story of a girl whose insatiable appetite for sugar and stories was the key ingredient to surviving her unhappy family.

Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, Kate Moses was surrounded by sugar: Twinkies in the basement freezer, honey on the fried chicken, Baby Ruth bars stashed in her father’s sock drawer. But sweetness of the more intangible variety was harder to come by. Her parents were disastrously mismatched, far too preoccupied with their misery to notice its effect on their kids.

A frustrated artist, Kate’s beautiful, capricious mother lived in a constant state of creative and marital emergency, enlisting Kate as her confidante – “we’re the girls, we have to stick together” — and instructing her three children to refer to her in public as their babysitter. Kate’s immigrant father was serious, aloof, ambitious, and prone to blasts of withering abuse increasingly directed at the daughter who found herself standing between her embattled parents. Kate looked for comfort in the imaginary worlds of books and found refuge in the kitchen, where she taught herself to bake, entering the one realm where she could wield control.

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