A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

Unfortunately, I inadvertently purchased an "uncorrected" proof of the book. I won't do that again as it was annoying to read... not properly edited and contained many repetitions and spelling errors. I expected more recipes... the title and premise of the book misrepresents what is clearly the author's enhanced personal journey of genealogical pursuit. Having done a similar search of my own ancestry, I found Twitty's journey interesting, but not 21 chapters worth.

Interesting take on how slavery influenced food in America by a man with legit connections. I enjoy Twitty's writing. It is not always pleasant to read about some of the things he tackles but the history of the races in America is not always a pretty topic.

Michael Twitty's writing is compelling, his journey fascinating. If you thought you knew a lot about the cuisine of the South and of African Americans - he will school you in what you missed, what has been mythologized, and what has been co-opted by mainstream culture. A must read for cooks and Southern historians, especially.

This is a difficult read, and an important one. Twitty talks about where American food comes from, and the difficult truths of our nation's history. It complicates our understanding of American cuisine in the way only the best writing and scholarship can.

What an amazing odyssey. Twitty has delivered an epic - a very personal tale of the relationship between Africa and America that produced the cuisine that so many of us love.
If you aren't pretty woke, you may be uncomfortable with the truths he reveals. But Twitty cuts through defensiveness with the adamantium blade of genuine frankness. He reveals his own tempestuous relationship with Southern cuisine and discomfort with parts of his heritage. As he says about an expert he spoke with, I don't know how to not hug him for his unflinching look in his own psyche and American history.
There are no words for the kind of heroic self-honesty that leads the son of enslaved workers to revisit the scenes of their toils and heartaches - to actually go out into the field and pick cotton until he's exhausted in order to understand what they went through.
As America struggles to come to terms with slavery's legacy today, Twitty's work stands out as a beacon of light and hope that we can understand our past and come to terms with it well enough to move forward together.

As a follower of Michael Twitty's blog, AfroCulinaria, I have been schooled by his righteous anger, hard-won erudition and huge heart. So I was very excited about the publication The Cooking Gene, and it does not disappoint. It's a bit hard to describe this book--it contains multitudes: Twitty's personal and genealogical journeys, a broader history of enslaved and free African Americans and their enormous role in the formation of American culture and cuisine, and a nuanced study of the vexed origins and definition of "Southern" cooking (a topic Twitty often attempts to untangle on his blog). It's a dense book, full of substance, that begs to be devoured quickly and, at the same time, savored.

I'd give The Cooking Gene five stars were it not for two flaws, one minor and one major. First, the syntax is often a bit muddied, which is not a problem in the more poetic stretches of of writing, but leads to serious confusion in the passages in which Twitty traces his ancestry. The lack of clear pronoun antecedents in one paragraph had the same person being born in both 1855 and in 1888! Second, and more distressing, is the lack of an index. In a book of this length, complexity and importance, it's a real handicap. I'm heartened by the praise The Cooking Gene is receiving, and I hope that the publishers will see their way to providing an index in subsequent editions (of which I hope there will be many).

This was an incredibly compelling, incredibly powerful book. I was spellbound from the first. Twitty will drop mere mentions of stories (like Hemings, half-brother to Jefferson's victim Sally who was a French trained chef or the free black women working in a bakery) and I would immediately wish for a whole book about each of these individual sidebars.

The book is dense and winding. I would have benefited greatly from color coded maps (ANY MAPS honestly) of Africa and which people ended up where in the US and during which major influx of slaves. I would have loved maps showing which foods were brought from which tribes to which parts of the the US. Twitty clearly knows his material backwards, forwards, inside and out. But you have to want to work for it here. Most of us, due to an entirely inadequate education are reading and learning for the first time. I knew I had gaps but the staggering scale of them was highlighted by everything Twitty was putting out. If he speaks near me, I want to go. His bio says he's a Judaic studies teacher but I want a course on this. The book is dense because it HAS to be. You can't put together this much information on this serious and fascinating a topic without it taking people some time to process.

This is easily the best thing I've read in a long time.

Aside: At the end Twitty is talking about the opportunities made available to white chefs of Southern food. And one of the people he names, Sean Brock is someone who I've seen on Mind of a Chef and whose show I found highly problematic due to its almost intense avoidance of black chefs as authorities on their own cooking traditions. That show prioritized white voices over all others (even has a white man making tamales). Twitty doesn't call out Brock, it's all very professional as he shares how he and Brock have discussed how different their experiences have been, but I'll do it.

Twitty deserves a show. He deserves to be heard. He is an authority and expert with a story to tell that can only be told by a person with a background similar to his. The level of detail he goes into, the minutiae that obsess him, we would all be better for uplifting his voice.

Get it. Read it.

This thought was brought home to me after reading The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty, who with passion eloquently documents his ancestral and culinary history from Africa to America, and all that entails: America's more than a melting pot. It's a cauldron of cultures and ethnicities that have added their native foods - and a part of themselves - to the pot for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Like other cultural chefs and culinary historians, Twitty traces the path that food has taken across continents to reach us today, telling the story that links us together with a common history. We come to realize how remarkably complex Southern food/Soul food is, along with the lineages of African Americans. Nowhere but America could this cuisine and culture come to be.

"I bring all of this into the historical kitchen with me: politics and race, sexuality and spirituality, memory, brokenness, repair, reclamation and reconciliation, and anger."

Every American needs to be aware of the diverse heritage that we all share.
We can't help but realize how intertwined we all are - as a bigger family that needs to heal its dysfunction. And, as we know, food brings families together as we resurrect and affirm our memories of one another: Twitty's book got me thinking, and not just about food. I have always viewed the South as a place I wanted to avoid, a place that I thought backward, mean, ignorant, close-minded, a place that went to war to continue to oppress an entire group of people as a way to maintain the lifestyle of a select few.
Michael W. Twitty makes me want to visit his South, the old South, the new South. He suggests that the chances are extremely high that Southerners are in some way related and that the South is one big family, albeit forcibly and horrifyingly related and extremely dysfunctional, one that now needs to sit down at the table, share a meal, and have a conversation to heal their endemic sickness with compassion and forgiveness, to create a dialogue on just how interconnected we actually are. Do we continue to deny the pain, guilt, and shame we have perpetrated or experienced OR do we finally acknowledge and deal with it and heal?

Twitty tells us, "Scientists say all humans are 99.99 percent genomically identical but it's that tiny 0.01 percent difference that is used to pick us apart by ethnicity or race and biological region. But how do you unscramble a scrambled egg? Who are you and what does the plate of food you put before me communicate to us who you are?"

We are admonished to remember that slavery flourished to keep white, Western consumers satisfied. Supply and demand. We must look carefully at what we demand, and how we insist it be done.

I don't think - no, I know - that most of us are completely ignorant of what the enslaved African American endured and contributed to this country, to its culture, its economic success, and its prosperity. Of course we never learn in school about these contributions. African Americans were the majority of the work force pre- Civil War, enslaved and enforced, on farms and plantations, providing America with rice, cotton, tobacco, corn, sorghum
- all cash crops that ran the economy. They often innovated and the white slaveholders took the credit.

The teeming riches that tempted Europeans to migrate to this country have been depleted by their greed, excess, and lack of caring for future generations. Plantation owners whose greed for more fueled the unsustainable methods of farming propelled the march across the continent to acquire and confiscate lands from native peoples, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake.

"The legacy of violence and corruption is a living reminder (my emphasis) that the slave trade isn't done taking victims all over the African world."

Why is it always the white man that "discovers" something that was already there. He sees it, appropriates it, he owns it, it's his. He white washes everything. It's the African "migration" not the largest enforced - with all the ugly that word conjures - migration in American history. The white male chef is heralded and acknowledged for his "discovery" of the origins and connections of Southern Soul food while black chefs are questioned and dismissed when presenting their knowledge of their own foodways, much like other culturally oppressed groups.

It is imperative, as Twitty says, "to tend to our own healing, not just work at assuaging the tensions born of slavery's racially divisive nature... This is about food being a tool for repair within the walls of black identities.
When you are oppressed, how you survive your oppression is your greatest form of cultural capital."

The next time you sit down for a meal, contemplate its origins - the journey it took to arrive on your plate. You might be surprised where it leads and how it impacts you.

I first became aware of Michael Twitty through the YouTube video of Jas. Townsend. Townsend, an 18th-century reenacter, cooks using authentic tools and techniques, while wearing historically correct costumes. If you haven't seen any of his YouTube videos, you're in for a treat. Among his videos, Townsend did a series on food of the enslaved people in America, with Michael Twitty as his guest.

That was enough to get me interested in his book, but it turned out to be so much more. Using his research into his own antecedents and what they ate, he developed what he called the Southern Discomfort Tour. He traveled through the south finding evidence of his ancestors, white and black, to fill in the gaps of his knowledge.

Along the way he writes about himself with a rare honesty. It isn't easy being a Jewish, gay, black man in our society today.

I enjoyed how Mr. Twitty intertwined his family's story with the origins of southern cooking. Although I cook gumbo and jambalaya (thanks to Southern Living recipes), I didn't know the origins of these recipes and the ingredients. So I found the African component to these recipes to be very interesting. As someone who is interested in genealogy myself, I found Mr. Twitty's research and revelations about his family tree to be fascinating. However, there were some cons with the book. I didn't find the writing to be very good. The author wrote long paragraphs, where shorter ones about only one subject or theme would have been easier to read. Sometimes he meandered in his writings too and often random subjects or issues would come into the conversation. I also wished Mr. Twitty included photos of his
parents and grandparents and other ancestors (if very old photos were available of them). He talks so much about them in the book with descriptions, it would have been nice to actually see their faces as they played a large part in Mr. Twitty's life and development as a cook.
In his next book, I would love to see Mr. Twitty go to Africa and visit the places from which his enslaved ancestors came from.

Twitty leads you in with cooking and recipes and charm and personal memoir ... and inexorably takes his family history back through the brutal realities of chattel slavery as it was perpetrated for hundreds of years. Throughout he frames his expert understanding of various African-American foodways as a tactic of resistance, survival, and connection. He brings in his identity as a gay man to talk about alienation and found community, and connects this to his genetic journey to create a family connection with closely-related strangers. He draws on his conversion to Judaism to comment on its lessons of diaspora for people descended from slavery’s horrors. It’s a huge, sprawling, sometimes messy, always honest read, and I was truly sad when it was done. Can’t recommend this enough.

A dizzying swirl of food and life and history and slavery and food and geneology and stories and Africa and everything that is a part of Twitty's life. I learned and/or felt.something new on every page.

Oh my. I cannot begin to express how beautifully this book is written. Mr. Twitty's ability to use words to paint pictures - and dishes - is hypnotic. Not only is the man accomplished in cookery, he is also an excellent historian and a wonderful wordsmith. The Cooking Gene is a joy to read.

Part history lesson, part memoir, sprinkled with recipes, this book is a treasure for anyone interested in Southern history. While Michael is a renowned chef, this isn’t a cookbook. This book is about bringing visibility to the African-American contribution to all that is Southern, including its cuisine. A political activist often uses the quote “We built this joint for free” to refer to African-American labor in the old South. Well, guess what? We fed this joint too, and Twitty’s work brings that to light. Highly recommend to culinarists, historians, genealogists, and anyone interested in the meaning of Southern/Southern cuisine.

Michael W. Twitty's "The Cooking Gene" memoir digs into the soil of the African American culinary history. Seeking to find his personal ancestral narrative, Twitty rediscovers the lost voices that whisper from the creaking kitchen floor, sterile auction block, and swaying underbelly of the ships in the Middle Passage. With dynamic prose that moves from crumbly cornbread and tangy buttermilk to stripped chained families torn apart, sold to the highest bidder, Twitty writes with emotional complexity and personal investment. Whether discussing collard greens or cotton, Twitty covers each topic with the same brilliant wit. His passion for the reclamation of heritage is infectious. Highly recommended read!

A dizzying swirl of food and life and history and slavery and food and geneology and stories and Africa and everything that is a part of Twitty's life. I learned and/or felt.something new on every page.

Oh my. I cannot begin to express how beautifully this book is written. Mr. Twitty's ability to use words to paint pictures - and dishes - is hypnotic. Not only is the man accomplished in cookery, he is also an excellent historian and a wonderful wordsmith. The Cooking Gene is a joy to read.

Part history lesson, part memoir, sprinkled with recipes, this book is a treasure for anyone interested in Southern history. While Michael is a renowned chef, this isn’t a cookbook. This book is about bringing visibility to the African-American contribution to all that is Southern, including its cuisine. A political activist often uses the quote “We built this joint for free” to refer to African-American labor in the old South. Well, guess what? We fed this joint too, and Twitty’s work brings that to light. Highly recommend to culinarists, historians, genealogists, and anyone interested in the meaning of Southern/Southern cuisine.

"The Cooking Gene" should be required reading for students and adults alike. Masterfully written in a voice that is entirely his own, this is the kind of book that changes the way you will look at the world.

I just started reading this and it is amazing. Michael Twitty seamlessly integrates his excellent research into historic foodways with a deeply personal narrative about his own experiences engaging with his southern heritage. He has taken the maxim that 'what you eat is who you are' and made it into a powerful lens to explore the presence of the past in modern America. Highly recommend.

This is nothing short of a life altering book and a magnum opus for the author. Rich, engaging and delicious words flow from the page and deep into your subconscious to marinate there and become a new whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Part cookbook, part memoir, part journey, part history, and yet so very much more. This book is one of my most treasured things. Thank you, Mr. Twitty, for including your readers in this grand tour.

An engaging journey through history, food, and the relationships among them that live on, are passed on, and are often deeply revealing. Reminds me a little of another great cook book writers journey, Roy de Groot's The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth. Your mind and your palate will learn from this book.

Chef Twitty is a national treasure where historic foodways are concerned so I am told. So it was a great disappointment to read a book almost solely dedicated to his vast genetic make up. There are a few recipes thrown in at the end of some chapters, but not much else in the way of historic cooking.. Never the less, the Chef is a witty writer, but not enough for me to finish his book. The author is African American and I am sure his large tome regarding genetics will be enjoyable to them.