A review by beccagomezfarrell
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty

5.0

Twitty provides a fascinating look into how African cooking during the Slave Trade influenced the modern day and historic foods we associate with Southern cooking today, and how climate, cash crops, and the violence visited upon the enslaved all are evident in the cuisine. It's a deep dive into his own personal genealogy and family oral histories as well, written in a way that doesn't provide conclusion, as so many African American people can never fully re-discover their lost roots. A few chapters may be drier to the non-historian reader, but the whole is engaging and necessary work.