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profesorawordnerd's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
lillowo's review against another edition
The book is denser than I really want at the moment. I kept finding myself struggling to stay engaged and I knew that wasnt what the book deserved.
zimms420's review against another edition
4.0
Twitty traces his families history as well as the history of slavery in America through food and genealogy.
If I wasn’t such a food nerd this coulda been boring but I loved the concept and I think he did a good job conveying the history and lessons he learned. I would not suggest this book to anyone except food and history buffs. But it is a very good and informative read.
If I wasn’t such a food nerd this coulda been boring but I loved the concept and I think he did a good job conveying the history and lessons he learned. I would not suggest this book to anyone except food and history buffs. But it is a very good and informative read.
thomastittley's review against another edition
1.75
I'm leaving this blank since I wanted to like this book and I liked the idea, just not the execution.
amyw2's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
rebcamuse's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
A "journey" is an apropos description for this book. I won't even attempt to quantify the percentages of history, memoir, documentary, and food writing. Twitty manages to intertwine his personal story with a history of foodways and people that inextricably connects ancestry, personhood, and food in ways that left me contemplating my own complicated feelings about food and culture. As an adoptee, with two parents who have died, I've not cared to search too much into my own genealogy--I suspect in fear that somehow the cultures and stories into which I was adopted will become "less than." If fear is in the mix, I am even more humbled because this book is at times gritty reckoning with both Twitty's own ancestral history, and this country's foundational story of exploitation and abuse. There are many passages in the book that make it obvious that our narratives about food, crops, and foodways are never isolated. Culinary history is American history. Or African history. Or European history. You get the idea.
"Instead, cotton ensured the growing and complete racialization of what it meant to be of African descent. African ethnic groups became the early Afro-Creole culture that began African America. If King Cotton had never reigned, we African Americans might be like an other ethnic group --stories might be passed down; names remembered; song, words, religions, prayers, perhaps, even on might say, a sense of pride. Instead, names were changed again and again and again, as people were sold, further commoditized, dehumanized, and abused." (357-8)
Twitty tells us: "My food is my flag" and his quest to to "regain...a heritage denied" is filled with pain, joy, curiosity, and tremendous beauty. There are multitudes of lessons here, and at some point I will give it a re-read, because I'm certain I'd find even more layers. One of my biggest takeaways, however--and this is coming from my historian's soul--comes from this passage on the last page:
"I mistook the past for a landscape to be managed by the learned mind but I was wrong. The past is not to be conquered or conveniently cinched in neat lessons and sound bites. It is a territory that will absorb you almost against your will." (425)
If you aren't interested in culinary history or genealogy...READ THIS BOOK. You owe it to yourself. Michael Twitty allows us to glimpse this "journey" and understand the true meaning and depth of that Carl Sagan quote that is too often blithely offered as inspiration instead of an invitation for reflection and exploration: "We are, each of us, a multitude."
sjgrodsky's review against another edition
1.0
I have read as much of this book as I can stand. I read the first 30 pages or so, jumped to the chapter called “Mishpocheh” and gave up.
I FELT like I was reading, but at the end of a paragraph, page, or chapter, I could not summarize what Twitty had just said. So it’s a waste to spend any more time “reading.” Nothing is sinking in.
(Deep sigh.) Michael Twitty is so well regarded. Maybe he’s a different person face to face.
In the interests of full disclosure, I will add that Twitty’s appearance — he is clinically obese — was a negative for me before I even opened the book. So I suppose you can say I did judge this book by its cover.
I said that “nothing sank in” but that is not exactly true. I did get what Twitty said about the visitor experience to a plantation. A plantation (I mean one of those white columned houses from the 18th to 19th centuries) is multiple experiences simultaneously:
Experience 1
———————
Some white people will see it partly (or exclusively) as “a place where people lived in luxury, despite the lack of modern conveniences.”
Experience 2
———————
Other white people might see it as the first — a place of luxury — while acknowledging that the luxury for a few was built on the misery for many.
Experience 3
———————
Black people will see it as a prison, at best. At “best” because the prisoners were innocent of any crime.
Twitty points out that guides typically present Experience 1. And so black visitors (and whites whose reaction is experience 2) will, at best, shake their heads in disbelief. How can that nice guide be standing knee deep in shit while pretending that she smells nothing?
I FELT like I was reading, but at the end of a paragraph, page, or chapter, I could not summarize what Twitty had just said. So it’s a waste to spend any more time “reading.” Nothing is sinking in.
(Deep sigh.) Michael Twitty is so well regarded. Maybe he’s a different person face to face.
In the interests of full disclosure, I will add that Twitty’s appearance — he is clinically obese — was a negative for me before I even opened the book. So I suppose you can say I did judge this book by its cover.
I said that “nothing sank in” but that is not exactly true. I did get what Twitty said about the visitor experience to a plantation. A plantation (I mean one of those white columned houses from the 18th to 19th centuries) is multiple experiences simultaneously:
Experience 1
———————
Some white people will see it partly (or exclusively) as “a place where people lived in luxury, despite the lack of modern conveniences.”
Experience 2
———————
Other white people might see it as the first — a place of luxury — while acknowledging that the luxury for a few was built on the misery for many.
Experience 3
———————
Black people will see it as a prison, at best. At “best” because the prisoners were innocent of any crime.
Twitty points out that guides typically present Experience 1. And so black visitors (and whites whose reaction is experience 2) will, at best, shake their heads in disbelief. How can that nice guide be standing knee deep in shit while pretending that she smells nothing?