Appetite for Sob Stories?

On Banana Heart Summer (2005) by Merlinda Bobis 

A Pinay maid in the US recalls her starving girlhood in a somber 1960s Third World neighborhood. She finds inspiration in the myth of the banana heart, turns to cooking for comfort, and discovers that her hunger can be appeased only in dreams. Cuisine clashing with grief can cause indigestion.

Paperback. Pasig: Anvil.