Beyond the Book- A Biography Club

The Beyond the Book Club is a biographies and memoirs club where we will explore the stories of fascinating people, the lives they led, and the art they created. This quarter, we are continuing our series of biographies about chefs and food professionals. This will be led by our librarian, Analisa. For more information, email Analisa at acaso@rcls.org. This month, we'll be reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty. 

"Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touchpoints in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes listeners 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. Twitty travels from the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields to tell of the struggles his family faced and how food enabled his ancestors' survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and visits Civil War battlefields in Virginia, synagogues in Alabama, and black-owned organic farms in Georgia.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 South's past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep-the power of food to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together."

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