Be Ready When Luck Happens and Connie

I discuss two hot memoirs of the fall season: Be Ready When Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten and Connie: A Memoir by Connie Chung. Both trace the trajectory of two strong, independent women who came of age during the 1960s and are leaders in their respective fields. Ina Garten is an American television cook author while Connie Chung is an American journalist who has been a news anchor and reporter for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC.

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Transcript

Amy Mair: 0:00

I gradually, I developed my own writing process, and it was always the same. I'm sure I have absolutely nothing to say, so I wait until the last second, then clean out my closet. Then finally, I force myself to sit at the computer, searching for the elusive opening sentence when I have that, the rest just seems to fall into place. You. Amy, hello, welcome back to the Red Fern book review. I am your host. Amy Tyler, and today we're going to talk about two big memoirs for this

fall. And they are Connie: 1:06

A Memoir by Connie Chung and be

ready When Luck Happens: 1:14

A Memoir by Ina Garten. I've recently read both. I read Connie a memoir for my book club, and I listened to it via audio, and then I just happened to be visiting my mom, and she got a package in the mail, and it was the INA garden memoir. And I'd been wanting to get it, but I kind of been putting it off, and because it's, you know, it's a hard bound book. And I thought, oh, you know, I'll wait for a special occasion, or maybe get it for Christmas, but my mom had it with her, and she would nap, and then I would kind of plow through this book, and I read it in three days, and I read it before I came home, and was really glad that I did, so that's the back story on that. But I think these two memoirs make a good pairing, because both women are both almost exact same ages, so they grew up with both the United States with sort of similar political climates. Connie is 78 and Ina Garten is 76 they both broke barriers, but in different ways, Connie broke barriers by being an Asian American and making it to the very top in her field, in broadcast journalism, and also by being a woman, and aina broke barriers by being a huge leader in kind of the food and running a food company, going on television, writing cookbooks. The topic is conventional, but the way she went about it wasn't she also broke barriers. What's also really interesting about them is a, I don't want to say a large part, well more in ina's case, but their husbands played massive roles in their success, which we're going to talk about so in ways, they relied on their husbands in certain ways and other ways they didn't at all. And there it's very much speaks about the kind of late 60s, early 70s into the 80s, times that they were getting into their careers and finishing school in so anyway, let's start. I think we're going to start first with the Ina Garten memoir. I love this memoir. I found it well, I love her. I mean, she's very relatable. She I have three of her cookbooks. I find her, her recipes aren't, you know, they're not difficult, but yet, and they're approachable, but yet, they're elevated. So they're kind of that perfect. They remind me. She reminds me a lot of Jamie Oliver, if you like his cooking as well, but her background. So she started out, she grew up in New York City, and her dad was a surgeon, and kind of she describes that she had a very difficult childhood. Both of her parents were very remote and had super high expectations, and she just was not happy at home at all. And when she was 17, she had an older brother, and she went to visit Dartmouth. And she tells this sort of meet cute story where she'd been set up with one of her brother's friends and was meeting him, and instead her. Husband, Jeffrey garden, sees her outside the window of the library and says, That is who I want to go out with. That's who I want to meet. And she had this sort of, I'd say, pleated skirt co Ed look sweater set thing going on with a Grow Green Ribbon. So it's interesting, because this is the late 60s, and often when we think of the 60s, we think of, you know, the radicals and bra burning and partying and free love. But there were a lot of people that were living this CO Ed traditional life, so it was kind of the two things were happening at the same time. And so she was part of this former group where she was at Dartmouth for the weekend. And so then they start corresponding through letters. Oh, and she goes out, ends out, ends up going out with his friend that night, but it wasn't a love connection. And then they they connect over letters, and they end up striking up a romance, and she goes to visit him at Dartmouth when she's a senior in high school, and then she goes off to college. But they get married quite young, and she's about 20 years old, 1920 and he's also in the military, which, if you have to remember, this is during Vietnam, so the military. A lot of people were anti military at that time, but he was in the military, partly, I think, also to pay for his schooling. But they, they, she was an army wife, but so subsequent to that, what's really interesting is, when they met, they very much imprinted on each other. He was a couple years older, and she was looking to him to take care of her and also kind of free her from her station and from her parents. And so they begin this life, and it was in in when it started. It was a little bit conventional in some ways, but they did other things, like they they went traveling, and she talks about, there's this really cute photo of her in a tent with a little makeshift stove, and they went traveling throughout Europe, and actually camped outside Paris, because they couldn't afford to stay in Paris. And they have this wonderful trip where they, you know, would basically buy things for they. They were able to live on. They lived on $5 a day. And she talks about how they did that, but that did give them money to at that time, to go to open air markets and buy beautiful cheeses and sausage and other things, and have sort of a charcuterie board. But she talked a lot about how that time, how she really learned to appreciate good food. And if you think about the kind of food that people were eating stateside at that time, it wasn't like that at all. It was much more processed, and so she kind of kept that in mind when she came back to the States, and eventually did get into the food business. But she talks about, if you're familiar with Julia Child, Julia Child talks about the first time she had a soul in she was in France, and it was smothered in butter, and I think it had been pan fried, and it was she had gone over to Europe as a diplomat's wife, and she was, I think, in her mid 40s at this point, and she has a bite of that, and it just sort of something clicked. And the same thing happened with Ina Garten when she had Coco van in France. So that kind of that sort of sets a little bit of a tone for a future life. But she came back, and they were separated for periods. She was finishing up school and he was away in the military. She had to actually go back and live at home for a bit, which was really tough. But she gets a degree. And fast forward a bit, and she's working for the White House, doing like, nuclear research of some type. She's a she's becoming, she's a political wonk, and she's bored out of her mind. So at this at this time, Jeffrey and her are living in Washington, DC, and she spies a ad in the paper that says something about basically a specialty food store for sale in the Hamptons, and that you're going to very quickly make six figures. And it didn't say the name. The name of of course, is the Barefoot Contessa, which becomes her store and her her moniker. But she just decided I'm going to do this, and she had already always. Cooked as a passion, like for fun, like she liked throwing together dinner parties, but she was not trained. She'd studied business in school, but just kind of went for it. And this is what's interesting. So her marriage, also, I want to there was one little bit that I thought was quite interesting she talks about they bought a home, like a little shingled row home in Washington, DC, and they went to get a loan to buy it. And as they're getting a loan, the loan officer says, okay, she had a really good job at the time, and they both had good jobs, but her job didn't count because she was a woman, and it was 1974 and the loan officer said, we don't consider your job you a person, because you're going to go off and have baby, and so it's not going to count. And she says that at the time, during that time, some women had to get letters from their doctor in order to be able to secure loans to prove or to say that they weren't going to get pregnant. So I thought that was really interesting. So she goes off with the support of her husband, and this is what's interesting. Her husband had also had a very high level career in government. He worked in the White House. He later was a dean at Yale as well, but they both went full steam with their careers. They decided not to have children. In part, she didn't like her childhood and didn't want to repeat things, but it also gave them freedom to go full tilt in their careers, and she credits that she probably wouldn't have been able to do, or definitely the thing she did was if she had had children. So she goes off and does this. She's living in the Hamptons. He's visiting, he's at times, he's he's working as an exec in government, official and then executive in Tokyo, and they make it work. But, and I won't reveal too much more, but to say one, one kind of thing about everybody feels about Ina Garten is that she has this unbelievable marriage, and they do, and they're very much in love. They've been together forever, but it seems perfect, almost glamorized, and some people get annoyed because she wrote a cookbook. I think it was cooking for Jeffrey and like, why would you do that? But what's interesting is she does talk about they did have a crisis in their marriage, and a lot of it had to do around women's roles, while the one hand, he was super supportive of her going to do things they came from a time and place where the woman was still expected to be somewhat subservient in ways, or basically take care of their husband. So you'll have to read the book to find out a little bit more they obviously got through it, but so a little bit more about the book. It she talks. What I found interesting was that, first of all, she took a big chance, and she was in something that she didn't like, and went for it. And then she moves into the Hamptons, and just she takes over this store, and it becomes like a little family, pretty it becomes kind of the place to go. The Barefoot Contessa is also, if you didn't know, named after an Ava Gardner movie. And she finds out that there's, you know, booming business in the summer where people want to come in and get their rotisserie chicken and their fresh croissants and everything. But then when it's shoulder season, nobody's there. So then she eventually buys a larger store also in the Hamptons, and then she, of course, branches out into television and cookbooks. So another one of the things I thought was really neat how she talked a lot about kind of leaning into her instinct, and when she's writing her cookbook, she knows nothing about it, yet she seems very sure of her branding, not even maybe even calling it her branding, but the things that she wants and how she wants to represent herself. And I think that's one of the reasons why she's been so successful, is that she had kind of an innate sense of who she was, and she didn't try to really be like anybody else. So I really like this book. I thought it was entertaining. I happened to really like her cooking. I think she's approachable. Another thing I've been watching since I finished the book is she talks about her show Be my guest with Ina Garten, and it's on the Food Network, and you can also watch it on HBO, and that's a great it's a great show. So it's like a 20 minute, 30 minute show, and she brings on celebrity guests, and. She cooks something that is significant to the guest, and then she sits down and does a little interview with them. And so just kind of it ticks a lot of boxes for me, like it's fun to watch the cooking that I'm probably never even going to do myself, but I feel like I'm there in her beautiful kitchen, and then she drops in and talks with celebrity guests, and I watched a recent episode where she's hanging out with Jennifer Gardner, and Jennifer Gardner's brought her grandmother's cornbread recipe, and it's got like, stains on it, cooking stains on it. It's handwritten, and her family loves it, but it's not quite right, and so ina garden changes up the recipe a little bit to make the corn bread more palatable and a little more fluffy and and I just thought it was great hanging out in the beautiful kitchen in the Hamptons that I will never visit. So with that, let's turn over and talk about Connie a memoir. So Connie a memoir. Okay, so first of all, this is an aside, but I did talk to someone else in my book club who totally agrees with me. I listened to this, and I was listening to it, of course, while I'm doing things around the house, I think I was mopping the floor, I don't know. And her, I found her voice a little bit odd and kind of halting when I thought that was interesting, because she's a broadcast journalist, and I don't know if this because she's a little bit older, but I don't know if you'll find that, but I do think if you listen to it, you might want to put it on 1.5 speed or two, because it it can be a bit slow. Anyway. Connie Chung is quite amazing. She's the youngest of 10 children born to immigrant parents that immigrated from China. Five of her siblings died in China, and so she was raised with four older sisters, but she was the only one that was actually born in the United States, and they settle in Maryland, and she describes herself as kind of a quiet child and studious. And she then something happens like kind of in college, she has a bit of an awakening. She was a good girl. There was a lot of filial responsibility, high expectations in the family. But she goes to college and university. She goes to the University of Maryland, which is a very good school, actually known for its journalism, and she blossoms. She gets into boys and partying and having fun, and really discovers her voice, and she gets into journalism. And first of all, she's a woman. Second of all, she's Asian, American, and at that time, there just wasn't that kind of representation on television. And she just goes, she talks about how she gets her first job, and she just doesn't take no for an answer. She goes to every television station in the DC area, and she's put together some tapes. She takes any job she can find, and anytime she gets a job, she makes the most of it, and usually ends up getting promoted. The other thing that was also very apparent, she had a rocky career in many ways, like she would get fired she worked with Dan, rather, who she doesn't have a lot of kind words for but he basically was responsible for getting her fired, and she nothing really stops her like she doesn't things that would kind of make other people maybe choose a different career or not Get out of bed, just makes her work harder. So I was, Oh, I know this is a kind of a neat little story. She was, she's surprisingly bawdy, she's very funny. She talks a lot about in journalism when she was a young working professional, you know, people, and it was usually the men. They would go the bars after work and hang out. And if you worked in Washington, DC, I knew this when I interned there as a student. It used to be that people on both sides of the aisle or the Democrats and Republicans would fight during the day, and then they go the bar at night hang out. It was very like a collegial atmosphere, but she didn't want to get left behind, because normally wouldn't. Would woman wouldn't go hang out and drink beers or do shots and party with the guys, but she knew she had to do. That in order to not miss a scoop. So she went and then she was attractive and she was young, and she would get kind of very sexist comments would be made, very inappropriate things said to her. So sometimes what she would do is lead with that comment towards a man, to just kind of take them off guard, say something inappropriate to another man, or just make sure that she was seen as one of the guys so she could have a seat at the table. So that's kind of interesting story. This book will appeal if you really, if you want some inside, insider baseball, on television journalism, she talks a lot about who was hired and fired and what people were like behind the scenes. She dishes a lot about Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer. She has a lot of respect for Diane, for Barbara Walters, but Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer did not get along, and were super hyper competitive. There were, there were definitely times when she was not able to get a story because Barbara Diane wanted the story and it would be written to their contracts that they had first dibs. Or it was also just kind of the way it was. So that's kind of interesting. But another thing that was interesting was her marriage with Maury Povich, who's known for being a tabla he's a tabloid talk show host. Um, kind of doesn't have the same reputation that she does for the harder journalism, but they really had quite a love match, and they've been together forever, married since 1984 together for like seven years before that, they had an open marriage at times they but he was huge champion of hers. And so I thought it was interesting in both these cases, these strong, independent women also had support of they they credit men and their life as helping propel them forward, or they just that that primary relationship was very central to both, both Ina and Connie. But my favorite part of this book, I have to say, is the end of the book. And I'm not spoiling it because it's it's something that's already been written about. But in 2023 there was an opinion piece in New York Times that you can look up, called Generation Connie. And what happened? There was a young reporter named Connie Wang, and she got in touch with Connie Chung and let her know that she was named Connie because of her. And so Connie Wang did a bunch of research, and there is a whole generation of Asian American parents who probably named their daughters after her. Most of them were were born in the 70s and 80s, and a few in the 90s. And so there's this beautiful moment where she finds all the Connies that she can and they all have lunch together, and they spend kind of a day she acts like their mentor, and they kind of talk to her about what her name meant. And she was named. They were named Connie, in some cases because the parents wanted their daughters to follow in Connie's footsteps, because not only was she successful, but she was beautiful and she was fashionable. They just loved all those things. And in some cases it was just representation, like she was on the news, and people saw people like that looked like them, and decided it was a great name. But regardless, I think that's a really beautiful legacy. So the Connie memoir was my book club's most recent book club selection. So I'll let you know after I have a chance to talk with everyone in the group what they thought of the memoir, but I can say that I definitely recommend it, and I'm gonna be coming back shortly. I've been attending a couple events at the Vancouver Writers Festival, so actually, tonight I'm going to listen to a panel of mystery writers. So I'm excited about that, because I always love a good mystery and I most recently went to talk with Malcolm Gladwell and his latest book, which is called Revenge of the tipping point. It's a redo of or an update of his first book and maybe his most famous book, although not my favorite book, My favorite book is the outliers, and I'll talk about that when we get back together. So anyway, thanks so much for listening and. Um, please share this podcast with a friend, and also, I would love to hear from you. If you have suggestions or ideas for upcoming episodes, you can reach me on Instagram at red bird book review. I'll talk with you later. See so thanks so much for tuning in today. And I just wanted to circle back from the excerpt that I read at the top of the podcast, and that was Anita Garton talking about her process for writing, basically how she procrastinates, sits around, cleans her house, sits down, and then finally comes up with the first sentence, and then she's got her got her writing. And it's funny, I just wanted to share a writing tip that actually don't follow. And the writing tip is, when you're writing, don't worry about the beginning. You should just keep going, because what it can do is create writer's block, and if you just keep going and write the body, you can go back and write the beginning. That's actually not what I do. What I do is I sit and stew and think about that first sentence sometimes for a week, and I let it percolate in my brain, do other things, and then one day it just comes to me, and then everything I'm writing kind of comes at once, and that's what I think I know is trying to say. So everyone has a little bit of a different process, but I would tell you not to do what I do, but thanks again for tuning in, and I'll be back soon with another episode of The Red Fern Book

Unknown: 27:02

Review.