Written by By Nadine Zelniker, CNN Hong Kong
French chef and food writer Arthur Labinjo-Hughes says it was “essential” for his new book “Le Dessert: Life as a Parisian Dishwasher” to feature stories like the one he tells in the opening chapter, “Le Badquette D’asile,” which describes his father and stepmother’s ostentatious consumption of lavish, processed, and syrupy desserts despite Arthur himself, a happy young man, being neglected by his mother.
In 2013, Arthur was thrust into the international spotlight with a nine-day hunger strike that he says compelled his family, particularly his mother, to properly acknowledge and care for him.
Crickets chirping and humming in the background, he says his suffering ended up being emblematic of France’s chronic poverty, which was acknowledged through the death of a homeless young man in 2015.
The movement began after his mother, Norma, fell sick with mephedrone — commonly known as “Mike” — at a popular Parisian nightclub. In search of attention and a high, she stole the next day’s $2,300 bills from his account and drove to his home in South Kensington, just outside of the French capital.
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She “didn’t tell anyone,” he told CNN of his mother, and only committed suicide five years later.
Once the family, including two of his brothers and eight nieces and nephews, arrived at Arthur’s home, police and social services “were somewhat calm,” he says, because they noticed some unusual behavior.
“The first move they could remember was kicking my six-month-old sister out of the house. They took my uncle out in the corridor and tussled on the floor with him. At midnight my mother started saying, ‘We need money.'”
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Four days after Arthur started his hunger strike, social services arrived to take his 15-year-old nephew — a troubled young man with no job or prospects — away, because the family didn’t have the funds to support him.
But it wasn’t until his mother committed suicide in November 2015 that everything came to a head. His whole life had been being held together by money, now that money had all but run out.
“The dignity and humanity I had hoped for the most was lost in that moment,” he said.
“Everything I had had completely disappeared. I came to see that being a chef could never make up for my humiliation. Cooking, when I started doing it, just felt dull.”
“Le Dessert” follows other chefs like British author Gillian Clarke, who followed her own experience with poverty to write about the struggle of others. Francis Mallmann , for instance, travels to Haiti, and takes pictures of the “defeated and hapless” villagers he comes across while setting up a soup kitchen.
“It’s OK to talk about money, it’s OK to have a wage, it’s OK to have the right to homes and education, and some rule of life that gives balance and dignity and respect,” says Labinjo-Hughes.
“But that first article of armor that allows you to get the daily grind done – be it work, pay or love – is gone. And I didn’t understand it. The only explanation I could find was a lack of structure and common sense.”