The Cooking Gene
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.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
8mentions
3people
2018–2019years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Recommendations from my reading this year:
Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. #1 with a bullet! This is the best, most useful book I've read in many years, and totally changed how I think about my thinking, and how other people (especially smart people) think. This is a must-read for anyone who thinks they're engaged and well-informed.
The Cooking Gene, by Michael Twitty. This was recommended to me by a very smart friend as the best book she read in 2017. It's behind only Factfulness for me. Ostensibly a history of African-American cooking in the South, it's a sprawling yet deeply personal work of history, genealogy, multiculturalism, and of course food. A masterpiece, full of knowledge, wisdom, and heart.
Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall. An overview of political geography, and how the physical structure of land and water affects the cultures living there, their opportunities, and their place in the world. It caused a total rethink about why Europe and the US have been so successful, and why Africa and South America have suffered. A worthy companion to the classic Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), by Jeff Tweedy. An autobiography by the Wilco frontman, talking about a lot of stuff I find intensely interesting - depression, being a bandleader, and being a parent and husband.
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor. An outstanding science fiction novella from an entirely different perspective - an African future.
The Ethics of Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir. A mid-century philosophy classic, tackling ethics from an existentialist perspective. Dense and difficult, but also highly entertaining and brilliant. Highly recommended if you read philosophy regularly (if you don't, start with something a little lighter!).
- Recommended reading list thread!
What have you read this year that you think others should read as well? Here's a few of mine that really stand out.
Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
The Ethics of Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir
Designing Delivery, by Jeff Sussna (re-read)
The Cooking Gene, by Michael Twitty
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
The Philosophy of Spinoza
The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan
- Being fully conscious of privilege issues here... your comment sounds like Outrage Addiction to me.
Yes, aware of problems with vote access. But those problems are fundamentally legislative, and won't be solved by treating the symptoms. Go to a state with sensible voting laws (my beloved Minnesota), and the system is immune, thanks to same day registration and provisional ballots. Even a concerted purge effort would crash against the well-designed system. These short-term election issues are a product of fundamentally bad design. Focus on fixing the design, not "protest".
Moreover - and speaking of privileged perspective - there is nothing that says you can't pay attention to the news and read novels, memoirs, self-help books, and of course the classics. There is no plausible political situation where you can't squeeze an hour a day off your Twitter feed in order to spend it reading, say, American Nations, or The Cooking Gene, and learn some of the historical roots behind the news that's ruining your blood pressure today.
There's a real distinction between urgent and important. I can recommend multiple good books on exactly that.
- Book recommendation, if you're into this stuff... The Cooking Gene - A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, by Michael W Twitty. I'm currently halfway through, and it's fascinating. It delves deep into the roots of pre-20th century recipes and food traditions, and how African, European, and Native American cooking techniques and ingredients (along with the social structures of slavery) joined to create what became Southern cooking.
Take that Thanksgiving standby, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. That dish can be traced directly to slavery in the Caribbean! Yams were a big part of the diet (a food from Africa), and on sugar plantations, they would take cooked yams to the boiling vats and ladle boiling sugar juice directly onto the yams. This came to America via the slave trade (many American slaves came from the Caribbean rather than directly from Africa), and evolved into new dishes that preserved the flavor without easy access to giant vats of boiling sugar.
The tracing of family recipes back to their origins is amazing.
- Writing a Go Interpreter
Writing a Go Compiler
No One Cares about Crazy People
I Heard You Paint Houses
UNIX: A History and a Memoir
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
How Asia Works
The Dream Machine
Black Earth
The Fabric of Reality
Behave (tried twice, maybe third times a charm?)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Genius: The Life and Science Richard Feynman
Super Thinking
Man's Search for Meaning
The Cooking Gene
The Vital Question: Why is Life The Way it Is (re-read)
The Case Against Sugar
The 15 Decisive Battles of the World
The History of the Peloponnesian War
The Beginning of Infinity
The Book of Why
- Recently finished The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. I would have been embarrassed to have been caught reading the latter given the subject matter, despite how influential he's been on how I think about food, but it was a real insightful treat.
Currently reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South and Safe Area Goražde, a comic book about the Bosnian War.
Also reading Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy in between books, but that's a book I'll never really finish.
