The Cooking Gene

A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

By: Michael W. Twitty

Narrated by: Michael W. Twitty

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018

A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.

Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who ""owns"" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.

From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia.

As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.

Thank you!

Michael Twitty books are the best I have listened to since Braiding Sweetgrass. Koshersoul and The Cooking Gene occupy two of the spots in my top five non-fiction books. I enjoyed the audiobook so much that I have already recommended it widely. I plan to by a physical copy to highlight and save quotes from as soon as possible.

the Cooking Gene

This was an excellent listen, with so much information that I never knew to even think about. I do not like how that sounds, but having always lived and traveled in the North, so much of this book is totally new information. A few spots got a little dry, but we're important for context--particulally the genetic research stuff. The author reading was nice.