Chopping Onions on My Heart: On Losing and Preserving Culture

'An optimistic and wryly funny book... rich with insights' OBSERVER'I couldn’t put it down’ RUKMINI IYER‘I loved this book so much...Think: The Body Keeps the Score in practice not theory’ ELLA RISBRIDGERSamantha’s mother tongue is dying out.An urgent need to find out more becomes an expansive investigation into how to keep hold of her culture - and when to let it goThe daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.A language that’s now on the verge of extinction. The realisation that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s ‘living in the days of the aubergines’ or ‘chopping onions on my heart’ opens the floodgates.The questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories without passing on the trauma of displacement?Will her son ever love mango pickle?In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl and the unexpected joys of fusion food.Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noa