Eat Your Words
Isabel Chiara
Genre
Biography/Autobiography, Non-Fiction, Self-Help
Publication Date
29/03/2021
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About the Book
Giana Giovanni wants you to know you’re not alone. If you’ve ever found your heart racing, fingers fumbling to rip open a bag of something crispy, salty, sticky or sweet; if you’ve ended one reckless night swearing off a corner store the way some attempt to swear off a bad romance, Giana wants you to know, she’s been there, too.
Eat Your Words outlines the history of a first-generation American Italian girl whose early curvaceous entry into womanhood and hearty appetite make for a complex-carb tale about the depth of our relationship with self-nourishment. Often self-derogatory, and certainly comedic, readers can fall in love with Giana as they relate to her often awkward and outlandish process, simply trying to find herself in the land of milk and honey. Nearing her 6th decade, join Giana as she realizes it is never too late to gain a sense of self-compassion and confront issues of body-image, or attempt to modify outworn behaviors.
Particularly relevant for those involved in the healing arts, Giana’s story will inform as it entertains, leaving the fortified reader one step closer to herself by its end.
What readers are saying about Eat Your Words…
“Warning: This book will get you to cancel your day’s plans and turn your phone off.”
“Eat Your Words paints a picture of what eating is like for many people in the world of fast living.”
Book Excerpt
“Over the years, I’ve found it better to keep my dietary tendencies to myself rather than get a sore neck from nodding absently in response to others’ clichéd insights, and suggestions
bulleted into easy adages. It’s simple, professed books, diet gurus, workshop giants, my sister, my mom, and even an occasional girlfriend I’d confided in. Just eat in moderation. Chew. Just abstain from eating at night. Always stop when you’re full. Pause between bites. Put your fork down. (People, what fork?)
I have a whole programming language of eating vernacular. My Eating Words are anything but easeful—and definitely not enviable. They arrive curtly, bluntly, front and center. Without question, they are the star of the show, but they are more than just the star. My Eating Words infect the stage, stain the curtain, consume the cast, shred the playbill, and undermine the script.
Bitch, you’re going to eat the whole thing anyway, so just eat it.
Eat it all fast. You can’t stop. You can’t put it down.
You have to buy it all. I want it all, as much as I can have. I can’t do anything else until I get it. And get both kinds because who are you to choose? You don’t choose. I don’t care.
You don’t care. There’s nothing else. Go to the store, then go home catatonically, watch a Hallmark movie, and pass out.
That’s what I want to do.
For two-thirds of my life, I’ve returned to this ceremony, living out the yin and yang of being cognizant, ambitious, committed to the exercise plan, the workshop, the healing path, the therapist certification, and then camouflaging in cookies, checking out in chocolate, turning off with tuna. I know I pushed it to the limit; I learned in the last years of that existence that the time had come. I took it to the very end, like a drag race, right to the edge of the cliff.
I’d lived out this body response too long. I had no choice but to attempt to gain real insight, to make actual change.”
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About the Author
Isabel Chiara
Isabel Chiara, author of Eat Your Words, created Giana Giovanni, a character whose story is told in the style of a first-person historic memoir. Giana’s story takes us from the farm fields of Italy circa World War II, to the era of Grease Lightening in the late 1970’s, and up to current day. In humorous, easy-to-read language, Eat Your Words gives us a peek at the generational path of overeaters beginning from a home-grown food heritage (in this case the traditional Italian pastas and farmland fare) to the fast-food, drive-thru window of the super-sized large fry and extra-thick chocolate shake.
With the wisdom of the feminine, Isabel supports Giana’s inner-exploration and aha moments, not pushing her to find a solution to her dysfunctional relationship with food, but encouraging her, through self-love, to live her way back into her body that feels, at last, like home. In this tale, our protagonist’s main “squeeze” and heroic rescuer isn’t the hot boy next door but rather the overly-handled bag of chips she grapples with until finally exchanging it for the act of self-embrace.
