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mellambert's review
fast-paced
5.0
I am definitely saving all of these sorghum recipes. The weaving in of family history to recipes is absolutely relatable. I can almost taste some of the recipes without having made them.
alciewms's review
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This treasure trove of stories, memories, and recipes tugs at my heart and sates my soul. Wilkinson takes us along as she remembers and honors the foodways of her ancestors in Affrilachiia, and I fall in love with her family. She examines her relationship with the kitchen and how her lineage brought her to the present, and I chuckle and weep in both gratitude and sadness for what both our childhoods were and were not. This is an incredibly generous collection from a truly gifted writer (and a fellow fan of plantains at the breakfast table!).
mpurdy's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Thank you, @netgalley , the author @crystalwilki , and the publisher @tenspeedpress an imprint of @clarksonpotter for this earc copy in return for an honest review.
When I applied for this book through netgalley, I wasn't too sure exactly what I was getting into. I am a history buff at heart and love learning new recipes. So this book sounded right up my alley. Though what I wasn't expecting was to be brought to tears on multiple occasions. Crystals' family history is fascinating and moving, and I couldn't help but reflect on my own. My life is not comparable at all, but what is is the love and connection we both share from cooking recipes passed down through the matriarchs in our lives and the ones from the past.
I loved the sentiment of making recipes better or becoming a better chef than those before us. I feel like that's ultimately what our family wants from us to be better. To take what they taught us and use them as the foundation to build on top of.Though sometimes I feel like I get caught up in keeping things the same to preserve them. When in reality tweaking them as I gain more knowledge is also keeping tradition alive.
I really enjoyed this style of memoir and always find it fascinating how much you can learn about a person when they talk about food and what they ate as a child. Food is a gateway to the soul and a tether to our ancestors, and The Prariesong for the Kitchen Ghosts illustrates this beautifully.
When I applied for this book through netgalley, I wasn't too sure exactly what I was getting into. I am a history buff at heart and love learning new recipes. So this book sounded right up my alley. Though what I wasn't expecting was to be brought to tears on multiple occasions. Crystals' family history is fascinating and moving, and I couldn't help but reflect on my own. My life is not comparable at all, but what is is the love and connection we both share from cooking recipes passed down through the matriarchs in our lives and the ones from the past.
I loved the sentiment of making recipes better or becoming a better chef than those before us. I feel like that's ultimately what our family wants from us to be better. To take what they taught us and use them as the foundation to build on top of.Though sometimes I feel like I get caught up in keeping things the same to preserve them. When in reality tweaking them as I gain more knowledge is also keeping tradition alive.
I really enjoyed this style of memoir and always find it fascinating how much you can learn about a person when they talk about food and what they ate as a child. Food is a gateway to the soul and a tether to our ancestors, and The Prariesong for the Kitchen Ghosts illustrates this beautifully.
henrygravesprince's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
In the interest of full disclosure, this review is specifically regarding a DRC copy of the book from Net Galley, so while I imagine this eBook was pretty close to finalized, some details may have been changed between my copy and the official release.
I would recommend this book to people with an interest in a wide variety of cultural foodways or particularly in Black, Appalachian, and/or southern foodways; anyone specifically interested in reading about Appalachian culture with a focus on the diversity of Appalachian experiences; and I would love for well-meaning outsiders who have misconceptions about Appalachian culture as inherently white to read this and widen their understanding. I also think a lot of my fellow white Appalachians need to read books like this, because I’ve seen a lot of people fail to grasp that Black Appalachian folks are not any less Appalachian than we are. I think the strongest aspect of this book is the throughline of grief and connection through cuisine as a distinxt expression of love, memory, and appreciation. On the flipside, I don’t think any aspect of this book is weak. I expected there to be a little more photography than there was, and I think more of it being featured wouldn’t hurt; overall, it’s well-balanced. I’m looking forward to checking out Wilkinson’s fiction oeuvre as part of my endeavor to read more Appalachian literature.
The construction of the text guides us through personal and familial anecdotes, as well as the context in which the foods came to be what they are, before showing us the recipes featured in those memories. Photography spreads of meals at hand accompanies the recipes, and photographs of Wilkinson’s family and ancestors are peppered throughout the book. The exposition through anecdotes is masterful, gorgeous—it’s incredibly evocative, effective at painting an image of memories for the reader, so intimate that it feels like our own. Every morsel of this book was impactful to me; half of this book resonated deeply in my soul as an Appalachian and the other half conveyed to me new dimensions of Black Appalachian history and culture. On just as many levels as I can’t relate to Wilkinson, I relate to her deeply. I get the impression that she chose what to include in this book very deliberately, and she did a wonderful job at that.
There’s a powerful throughline here of finding one’s ancestral path and identity through cuisine, of grief and love, of survival and homage. The recurring theme of connecting with family, alive and dead, over shared experiences and illuminating the dark corners of memory, with cuisine as a conduit, is staggeringly poignant and squeezes my heart. Wilkinson’s writing style is absolutely stunning. Syntax and phrasing is distinct and fresh, conveying meaning and intention clearly without recycling played-out cliches. The grammar is solid and consistent, not jumping out at me or distracting me from the reading experience at all, just how I like it. The use of description, memory, and metaphor in storytelling here are incredibly evocative and there’s a distinctly Appalachian rhythm to the writing in this book. Her words have a way of cutting right to the heart of something, and this book made me tear up every time I sat down to read it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Racism, and Slavery
Moderate: Death of parent and Racial slurs
Minor: Animal death, Child death, and Mental illness
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