Michael W. Twitty Talks About 'The Cooking Gene'

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What can American slaves from the past teach us about food justice today? Southern cuisine—from barbecue to soul food—is integral to American culture, but like so much of the African American experience, even the origin of the Southern culinary traditions has been largely appropriated and used to oppress generations of black Americans. From plantation kitchens to rice fields and tobacco farms across the South, food culture and who “owns” it has long been a divisive issue.

In 2011, food historian Michael W. Twitty began an ambitious project to trace the history of Southern food and to restore America’s awareness of its culinary identity by repositioning the conversation of race in America. Twitty is the creator of the award-winning blog, Afroculinaria, which is the first website devoted entirely to understanding and documenting African American food history and its legacy. In 2018, Twitty released his book The Cooking Gene, an illuminating personal memoir that was named the James Beard Foundation Book of the Year. In his quest for culinary justice, Twitty travels through the South to retrace his own family’s history and to document the culinary traditions of generations of marginalized men and women. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South invites everyone to a seat at the table of culinary history for a fresh perspective on food, race and family legacy.

Twitty will appear at the UW-Milwaukee Golda Meir Library, 4th Floor Conference Center, for a panel discussion at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 19. The panel will be moderated by “Wisconsin Foodie’s” Kyle Cherek and is co-sponsored by UW-Milwaukee’s Stahl Center for Jewish Studies and Boswell Book Company.