Twitty’s pitch for the book encompasses an astounding variety of experiences: centuries-old Black Jewish lineages in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe historic Black Jewish communities in Harlem, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and across the U.S. That’s an intimidating task, and not just because many people refuse to acknowledge the possibility that someone can be fully Black and Jewish, as Twitty recounts in the book. “No,” Twitty responds, “this is a book about a part of Black food that’s also Jewish food this is a book about Jewish food that’s also Black food because it’s a book about Black people who are Jewish and Jewish people who are Black.” Twitty, whose 2017 memoir The Cooking Gene uses food to trace his ancestry from Africa through the slave trade and the American South, is asked by another writer if he’s traded writing about Black food for Jewish food. “Twitty ably joins past and present, puzzling out culinary mysteries along the way…An exemplary, inviting exploration and an inspiration for cooks and genealogists alike.On the very first page of Koshersoul, culinary historian Michael Twitty is already fighting to be understood. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the South’s past.Īlong 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. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and visits Civil War battlefields in Virginia, synagogues in Alabama, and black-owned organic farms in Georgia. 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. 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. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. 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. 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.

Michael twitty the cooking gene