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. TwittyĪs he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past.

Trace the slave-era roots of BBQ with Michael W.Twitty, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the. So much was lostnames, faces, ages, ethnic identitiesthat African Americans must do what no other ethnic group writ large must do: take a completely shattered vessel and piece it together. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. 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. Released earlier this month, The Cooking Gene traces the story of Twitty’s familyand of black culinary contributionsacross the Atlantic and back. The Cooking Gene Quotes Showing 1-30 of 39. 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.įrom 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.

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