The Cooking Gene
A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
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2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. Illustrations by Stephen Crotts
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Great for fans of the not-straight-forward elements of geneology, great for fans of food origin stories, great for fans of southern food.
I read a lot of non-fiction on Very Interesting Topics that find me powering through dry writing because KNOWLEDGE!, and that's what I expected from this - I was totally wrong. The writing straddles conversational and evocative, and the narrative weaves effortlessly back and forth between personal and historical. Beautifully written, emotional and informative.
I am amazed by the information the author found out. There is information about his family, their food, the roots of their food, the spread of their food, the health ramifications of their food, etc. This book is interesting and so full of information! I will have to reread this book again to catch it all.
A moving account of Michael Twitty's personal journey to explore his ancestry through culinary history, genealogy, population genetics, travel, and his own memories. The book is studded with fascinating (and often disturbing) details about the ingenuity required of enslaved people in the United States to survive, and thrive. The narrative underscored for me and enlightened me in a new way about just how much culture and language from West and Central Africa survived the ravages of persecution and time to remain vital and present in the lives of the descendents of enslaved people today - and the descendents of their ancestors' enslavers - especially in Southern foodways.
A few quibbles: perhaps it's because I bought a mass-market edition, but there were multiple issues that a copyeditor should have caught (creative uses of em-dashes made the structure of some sentences unclear, and required me to re-read them multiple times). The book also could have benefited from an index, but my guess is that the publisher/editor wasn't willing to pay for an indexer.
Still, I absolutely recommend this to anyone interested in culinary history (especially of southern American, West African, and/or Central African cuisines), African American history, and genealogy. Michael Twitty is an excellent writer who goes above and beyond in his efforts to get at a personal truth, and is generous enough to give the reader a window into it.
