Kitchen School is a memoir. It’s about memory—my memory. It’s my version and my recollection of the way things happened passing through. My Mama is the protagonist of my story. In a way she is the protagonist of my whole life. It’s hard to know where she leaves off and I start.

This book has been waiting to be written by me for quite a while. Yet it does seem to have a life of its own. There are pieces of it everywhere—in the ethers, on scraps of paper, in tattered old notebooks, and even written on the wind. Its energy has been pressing out on me from within like the force of an imminent birth. I have been trying to ignore it to some extent, and to no good advantage. Procrastinating, denying, negating, doubting. In the neglect of the birth of this book, I am afraid I have neglected and, in some ways, abused myself.

I have had enough of that!

I am determined to go with the flow and allow the book’s own voice and energy to have its way and come forth in full flower. The book is dedicated to the love and life of my mother, Portia Louise Broyles Griffith.