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A review by cecile87
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
4.0
DNF. I appreciate this book very much. But I didn’t have the patience to get through to the end. This is a college semester-type book—at least for me. Very dense.
Not an easy read. I got used to his prose, but this book is much more than food history. Food and cooking methods, as we know, are reflective of culture and survival.
The commentary on enslavement, the lost family lines many Blacks have had to accept, the craziness of white denial, the smugness of the whites who work for and visit plantation museums (the history they miss or just get wrong), requires patient reading. The snippets that reflect the casual cruelty, the dark exploitation that is reflective in many of our gene pools. There’s the theft of recipes that made famous food writers famous but originated in the plantation quarters of the enslaved. Wondrous dishes made from the scraps allowed by the commodifiers. The savagery of people from the white tribe that continues to this day—brought me to tears. That we may actually be genetically linked to those who find us expendable is ironic.
I had to read in small doses. It is a lot of book from a very bright, wordy and reflective person. It would have been a better experience for me had he put the different themes in their own sections of the book rather than mash them all together.
Not an easy read. I got used to his prose, but this book is much more than food history. Food and cooking methods, as we know, are reflective of culture and survival.
The commentary on enslavement, the lost family lines many Blacks have had to accept, the craziness of white denial, the smugness of the whites who work for and visit plantation museums (the history they miss or just get wrong), requires patient reading. The snippets that reflect the casual cruelty, the dark exploitation that is reflective in many of our gene pools. There’s the theft of recipes that made famous food writers famous but originated in the plantation quarters of the enslaved. Wondrous dishes made from the scraps allowed by the commodifiers. The savagery of people from the white tribe that continues to this day—brought me to tears. That we may actually be genetically linked to those who find us expendable is ironic.
I had to read in small doses. It is a lot of book from a very bright, wordy and reflective person. It would have been a better experience for me had he put the different themes in their own sections of the book rather than mash them all together.