Lena Dunham's Ode to Takeout Is Surprisingly Tender
LatestLena Dunham’s essay “Deliverance” appears in the November issue of The New Yorker and it’s a surprisingly delicate and sensitive piece on what it’s like to get raised on takeout food as opposed to home cooked meals. (Disclaimer: If you like Lena Dunham then you will probably like this essay; if you don’t like Lena Dunham, the essay is unlikely to change your mind.)
In the piece, Dunham writes of her mother — artist Laurie Simmons — and the guilt she felt about not having the time to cook for her own family:
My mother’s best friend, Sarah, is also an artist, also a mother of two, busy and modern. Sarah cooks for her children constantly, and it makes my mother crazy with guilt.
Instead, Simmons and her husband (fellow artist Carroll Dunham) relied on takeout. As with most things Lena Dunham writes, the piece is tinged with privilege — having your food delivered on a nightly basis requires funds that most families don’t have. Still, the essay also manages to strike a note of nostalgia for those of us who didn’t grow up with Parents Who Cook.