"He Never Liked Cake": A Memoir By Brooklynite Janna Leyde

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Janna Leyde

(photo provided by the author)

Janna Leyde with her father in a family photo

One of the pleasures of writing Pardon Me For Asking comes from meeting so many interesting people along the way. Their stories are all unique and inspiring and I am always awed by the talent represented in our neighborhood.

Just a few days ago, I was introduced to Janna Leyde , a yoga teacher at Mala on Court Street, whose first book is being released today. He Never Liked Cake is Janna's coming-of-age memoir about her father's traumatic brain injury, love, and subsequent "acceptance when life doesn't work out the way we had it planned."Below is an excerpt from He Never Liked Cake

“Maybe New York was becoming too much on top of brain injury, which would always be too much. Brain injury slaps you with an acute change and then slowly tears away everything you love about a person one piece at a time. And even though brain injury had built my character, just like my grandmother had said it would the night we drove home from the hospital, the night I wished on the stars between the defogger lines, it had always been too much. Sure, it was all for a reason, a reason I had yet to come up with. Years of searching, and I still end up in the backseat, ruminating on God and existence and the consequence of good and evil in humanity. I lived my parents’ struggle. I was their kid. It was my birthright. I owed it to them, to their past, to my childhood, to our old happiness.”

The book is available on sale on Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com.

Janna will be appearing at Book Court on Court Street on April 22nd at 7 PM.