Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History In The Old South: A James Beard Award Winner

Title
Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History In The Old South: A James Beard Award Winner
  • Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History In The Old South: A James Beard Award Winner by Michael W Twitty
Price
$16.99
Available In Store
SKU
9780062379276
Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History In The Old South: A James Beard Award Winner
$16.99
Available In Store
Description

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 He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia.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

ISBN
9780062379276
Publisher
Publication Date
July 31, 2018
Binding
Paperback
Item Condition
New
Language
English
Ages
0-0
Pages
480
Keywords
Cooking | History; Cooking | Regional & Ethnic | American - Southern States; Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American - African American & Black Studies; Cooking | Essays & Narratives

Location & Hours

A Novel Concept
222 South Washington Square
Lansing, Michigan 48933

anovelconcept517@gmail.com

Get Directions

  • mon Closed-
  • tue 11:00am-6:00pm
  • wed 11:00am-6:00pm
  • thu 11:00am-6:00pm
  • fri 11:00am-6:00pm
  • sat 11:00am-4:00pm
  • sun Closed-