'To eat is to build upon our collective story. We use food to say, again and again, who we are.'
Eating with My Mouth Open is food writing like you've never seen before: honest, bold, and exceptionally tasty. Sam van Zweden's personal and cultural exploration of food, memory, and hunger revels in body positivity, dissects wellness culture and all its flaws, and shares the joys of being part of a family of chefs.
Celebrating food and all the bodies it nurtures, Eating with My Mouth Open considers the true meaning of nourishment within the broken food system we live in. Not holding back from difficult conversations about mental illness, weight, and wellbeing, Sam van Zweden advocates for body politics that are empowering, productive, and meaningful.
About the Author
Sam van Zweden is a Melbourne-based writer interested in memory, mental health and the body. Her writing has appeared in the Saturday Paper, Meanjin, The Big Issue, The Lifted Brow, Cordite, the Sydney Review of Books, The Wheeler Centre and others. Her work has been shortlisted for the Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers, the Lifted Brow and on/fictionLab Experimental Nonfiction Writing Prize, and the Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Awards. Eating with My Mouth Open won the 2019 Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award.
Industry Reviews
'This is writing as sustenance. The book's moments of deep insight and intimacy, all its quiet revolutions, are answerable – as is the case with the most enduring nonfiction – to two gods only: truth and nurture.'
Maria Tumarkin author of Axiomatic
'Eating with My Mouth Open feels like being gifted the most glorious odd-box from the Farmers' Market: inside are delicious, unnamable fruits and shining vegetables. Van Zweden's writing is at once both nourishing and thorny, generous and eclectic, sumptuous and piquant. This book marks the arrival of a fresh voice in Australian nonfiction.'
Rebecca Giggs author of Fathoms: The world in the whale
'Amazingly attuned to those tender points where food tangles with family, trauma, illness and mental wellbeing – Sam van Zweden describes everyday food moments with clarity and compassion in a way that made me fall in love with food all over again.'
Ruby Tandoh author of Eat Up!
'In this excruciating time of bougie food-for-cultural-capital, of 'body-positive' rah-rah, of food-loving, body-shaming confusion, Sam van Zweden cuts through the bullshit, arguing that food is for love, and that if we love food, we must love the bodies that food nurtures. Van Zweden is a masterful caretaker of the bodies that have been left out.'
Ellena Savage author of Blueberries
' Eating With my Mouth Open is a beautiful book: heartfelt, intelligent and full of love.'
Fiona Wright author of The World Was Whole and Small Acts of Disappearance
'Sam van Zweden's Eating With My Mouth Open is at once an expressive memoir and a cultural commentary on the role of food in our lives...Fans of Roxane Gay, Lindy West or Clare Bowditch's Your Own Kind of Girl will get a lot from this book, but perhaps more importantly it is an ideal read for anyone new to the concepts of body politics and fat activism.'
Books+Publishing
