Black food : stories, art, and essays /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A beautiful, rich, and groundbreaking book exploring Black foodways within America and around the world, curated by food activist and author of Vegetable Kingdom Bryant Terry.

WINNER OF THE ART OF EATING PRIZE . JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE . ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR- The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe . ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR- The Washington Post, Time Out, NPR, Los Angeles Times, Food52, Glamour, New York Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Vice, Epicurious, Shelf Awareness, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal

"Mouthwatering, visually stunning, and intoxicating, Black Food tells a global story of creativity, endurance, and imagination that was sustained in the face of dispersal, displacement, and oppression."-Imani Perry, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University

In this stunning and deeply heartfelt tribute to Black culinary ingenuity, Bryant Terry captures the broad and divergent voices of the African Diaspora through the prism of food. With contributions from more than 100 Black cultural luminaires from around the globe, the book moves through chapters exploring parts of the Black experience, from Homeland to Migration, Spirituality to Black Future, offering delicious recipes, moving essays, and arresting artwork.

As much a joyful celebration of Black culture as a cookbook, Black Food explores the interweaving of food, experience, and community through original poetry and essays, including "Jollofing with Toni Morrison" by Sarah Ladipo Manyika, "Queer Intelligence" by Zoe Adjonyoh, "The Spiritual Ecology of Black Food" by Leah Penniman, and "Foodsteps in Motion" by Michael W. Twitty. The recipes are similarly expansive and generous, including sentimental favorites and fresh takes such as Crispy Cassava Skillet Cakes from Yewande Komolafe, Okra & Shrimp Purloo from BJ Dennis, Jerk Chicken Ramen from Suzanne Barr, Avocado and Mango Salad with Spicy Pickled Carrot and Rof Dressing from Pierre Thiam, and Sweet Potato Pie from Jenne Claiborne. Visually stunning artwork from such notables as Black Panther Party creative director Emory Douglas and artist Sarina Mantle are woven throughout, and the book includes a signature musical playlist curated by Bryant.

With arresting artwork and innovative design, Black Food is a visual and spiritual feast that will satisfy any soul.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Introduction "Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing." --Audre Lorde Black Food is a communal shrine to the shared culinary histories of the African diaspora. These pages offer up gratitude to the great chain of Black lives, and to all the sustaining ingredients and nourishing traditions they carried and remembered, through time and space, to deliver their kin into the future. Every one of us who came together to make this book invoked sacred energies to support the creation of a beautiful, delicious, and thought-provoking compendium. We pray that this collection facilitates reflection on and veneration of our sacred foodways. Recipes are the through line of Black Food . Without being overly prescriptive, I asked brilliant colleagues to offer dishes that embody their approach to cooking and draw on history and memory while looking forward. I encourage you to make many recipes in this book and create space for meaningful, visceral experiences. Trust me, the food will provide more sustenance, more nourishment, more health, more pleasure, and more life. But that's not all. Black Food also includes moving visual art, thought-provoking essays, and imaginative poetry that will encourage spiritual and intellectual exploration, renewal, and growth. We seek, in these pages, to promote a concept of food that embraces courage, commitment, and self-discovery, and ultimately moves each and all of us to a better place. In my graduate school advisor Robin D.G. Kelley's 1994 essay collection Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora , I discovered a profound rumination by the late South African scholar-activist Bernard Magubane. Diasporic consciousness arose from "a determined effort on the part of Black people to rediscover their shrines from the wreckage of history." In this book--this altar--we lay out, and lay on it, the collective weight, the push of experiences and traditions of the African diaspora, the movement of Black bodies and Black food far and wide, from pre-Columbian voyages out of Africa to the violent dislocations of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. This collection also urges us to stop and dive deeply into the politics of pleasure, of rest--as in Tricia Hersey's concept of the Nap Ministry and R&R as resistance--and of Black leisure, whether stretching out to chill and sip "beautiful" drinks in the afternoon at Oakland's Red Bay Coffee or strolling through Paris all evening with nowhere specific to be, brushing dirt off one's shoulder like the flyest flâneur. We subscribe to the philosophies of Toni Morrison, a joyful warrior wielding her quill and freedom dreaming, insisting we shut out the nightmarish distractions of racism. We let Morrison show us how, with a fresh pair of eyes, we can perceive a world full of love, light, peace, pleasure, and rewards previously denied. We are grateful for Sarah Ladipo Manyika's remembrance, "Jollofing with Toni Morrison," and for Penguin Random House editor Porscha Burke's wealth of wisdom and experience, whether in guiding the 35th anniversary reissue of Morrison's groundbreaking Black Book (a major inspiration for the volume before you) or the reissue of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. In our "Black, Queer, Food" chapter, we are fortunate to witness the most profound dialogue by and about our diaspora's most marginalized, and most resilient and brilliant, community: Ebony Derr, Lazarus Lynch, Zoe Adjonyoh, and Leigh Gaymon-Jones lead us in a timely conversation about how LGBTQ activism is the vanguard of creating vibrant culture, love, and kinship out of disruption and rejection. Crucial to us thriving is creating the broadest table, with seats reserved for all of our people throughout the diaspora. Like the Black men depicted in Kerry James Marshall's Garden Project --a series of large-scale paintings set in Chicago's South Side--we should all weed, rake, and dig deeply to uproot attitudes and habits that marginalize, reject, or erase any of us. The many mansions of Black food have always had--and will always have--room for everyone. As our clear-sighted Black liberation activist Anna Julia Cooper insisted, each soul can and should decide when and where they enter into this rich tradition. Our aim in Black Food is to maintain this practice of openness, to encourage the sharing of these journeys and discoveries across the diaspora at large. Black Food is rich with points of connection, in which the reader can engage with and perhaps more deeply appreciate the many-colored threads in this diasporic epic of Black exodus and redemption. Each chapter and verse, each poem, photograph, painting, think-piece, and recipe is a portal to beloved communities of plants and animals, food and pleasures, leisures, tastes, and cultures across many eras. Learn how to make sacred spaces suited to your own home and kitchen, at your own pace of growth. Perhaps you will begin with something simple and soothing like Krystal Mack's update on traditional Yoruba okra baths. Or you may be drawn to more elaborate practices, as with Latham Thomas's and Jocelyn Jackson's guidelines for intentional ritual creation, altar making, and seed weaving. Black Food is an offering in which the contributors, whether chefs, artists, activists, scholars, journalists, or poets, seek to honor a pantheon of revered ancestors: we deify Octavia Butler in "Caring for the Whole Through This Black Body," adrienne maree brown's introduction to our chapter on Radical Self-Care. Audre Lorde's life and legacy are writ large across that chapter's focus on defining, nurturing, and defending one's self, as are other spiritual forebears like bell hooks and Cedric Robinson. We stand on iconic shoulders, like those of Black liberation theologians Reverends James H. Cone and Albert Cleage, in our chapter on Spirituality. Intellectual titans like W.E.B. Du Bois inform deeply personal reflections like "Beyond the Tree Line," Rashad Frazier's return to his native North Carolina's rural spaces, disrupting the racist histories of color-lines. With Thérèse Nelson and Rahanna Bisseret Martinez, we give thanks to visionaries like Lena Richard and Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, whose prescient critiques of the US evolution from domestic food work to professional kitchens help us find footing for Black creativity and entrepreneurship in a booming food media landscape. With Tracye McQuirter and Fred Opie, we cherish Dick Gregory, who, in the tradition of prophetic truth-tellers like Elijah Muhammad, Peter Tosh, Coretta Scott King, and KRS-One, aggressively rejected the toxic food traditions of slavery, colonialism, and industrialized food systems. In "Land, Liberation & Food Justice" and "Black Women, Food & Power," inspired by the ingenuity of celebrated grassroots organizers like Fannie Lou Hamer and Georgia Gilmore, our contributors Monica White, Charlene Carruthers, and Psyche Williams-Forson explore how Black folk fought for life and liberty by leveraging fecund land and delicious food. In the names of these ancestors we claim and reclaim radical models of food, health, and wellness for Black communities, revolutionary not only in their newness, but also in their rootedness in ancient African traditions. This book is a Sankofa bird, standing astride the crossroads of past and present, with a neck craning back to what came before, measuring our progress. Its feet point toward what is to come, with an egg signifying the future held protectively in her beak. To paraphrase Zora Neale Hurston, the present is an egg laid by the past that has the future inside of its shell. Black Food represents a bridge from our ties to traditions in the Motherland to our wildest dreams that will manifest in the future. Black Food is meant to live alongside you not only on coffee tables, credenzas, and night stands. Toss it in your bag, satchel, purse, or on the passenger seat, and ride out to your local farmers' market and grocery store. Level-up your skills with practical cooking know-how shared by our brilliant chefs. Expand your African diasporic cooking repertoire and impress your family and friends. Pass it around at cookouts, barbecues, and family reunions. Like Black people, this book contains multitudes. Excerpted from Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora [a Cookbook] All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In his latest book, award-winning chef Terry (Afro-Vegan; Vegetable Kingdom) brings together chefs, artists, activists, and scholars to reflect on culinary histories of the African diaspora. Terry's introduction explains how Black cuisines, like their creators, contain multitudes. The book's contents include essays on Black food history (Michael W. Twitty's text on food and migration) and recipes (Erika Council's vegan sweet potato coconut biscuits; Terry's grape-tarragon spritzer), plus other contributions from Black chefs (BJ Dennis, Mashama Bailey, Nina Compton). The book recalls Marcus Samuelsson's The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food, in that each of its book's sections invites readers to reflect on a specific ingredient like rice or a broader subject, like food as sustenance. Chapters on Black women's contributions to and Black queer influences on the diaspora are standouts. VERDICT Whether read straight through or browsed section by section, this meaningful book brings Black foodways into focus and will leave a lasting impact.--Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

Publishers Weekly Review

Inspired by The Black Book, the 1974 compendium of Black American history and art coedited by Toni Morrison, this soulful, food-focused extravaganza edited by James Beard Award--winning chef Terry (Vegetable Kingdom) is built upon a similar scrapbook structure, calling upon scores of contributors to provide recipes along with a whirlwind of essays, poetry, photos, and paintings that celebrate Black culture through its food. The opening chapter, "Motherland," presents African dishes such as Hawa Hasaan's Somali lamb stew, while a section centered on the theme of migration and culinary fusion provides a West Africa meets Europe entrée, D.C. chef Dadisi Olutosin's poulet yassa osso bucco. Food activist Dara Cooper's stirring essay "Black Food as Resistance" ushers in a collection of liberation-themed dishes, including Adrian Lipscombe's collards, which are seasoned with the wisdom of her great-grandmother: "The color and the hardiness... informs you how the greens were cared for." Family ties also bind in a woman-centric chapter that includes jerk chicken ramen, created by Suzanne Barr in honor of her Jamaican mother. Elsewhere, a sensuous section tied to queer culture runs sweet with a beautiful essay from Savannah Shange--in which nectarines and sexuality merge--and a recipe for rum raisin plantains foster served up by Chopped champion Lazarus Lynch. This broad mosaic of Black society is as powerful as it is flavorful. (Oct.)

Booklist Review

James Beard-- and NAACP Image Award--winning vegan chef, food activist, and author Terry (Vegetable Kingdom, 2020) presents to readers a wonderfully deep dive into the food, culture, history, and people of the African Diaspora, exploring its wide range across Africa to the American South, the Caribbean, and Afro-Asia. The book's generous variety of offerings include playlists to cook by, essays, musings, poetry, and stories about food, food culture, and food systems written by many authors from various backgrounds within the diaspora, such as the song "Mother Earth," by Cindy Blackman Santana, and the essays "The Poetics of Afro-Asian Cuisine," by Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe, "Queer Intelligence: We Mobilize through Food," by Zoe Adjonyoh, and "The Spiritual Ecology of Black Food," by Leah Penniman. The recipes included are just as diverse a bunch as their contributors: buttermilk biscuits, pili pili oil, Somali lamb stew, and doubles. Notes and personal stories within recipes--which are one to two pages, many including pictures--will make readers feel engaged and excited to cook. This is not only a book of recipes, but a book of history and experiences that readers will enjoy digging into as they bring the global community of the diaspora into their kitchen.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Bryant Terry is an NAACP Image Award winner and a James Beard Award-winning chef and educator and the author of Afro-Vegan and Vegetable Kingdom . He is renowned for his activism and efforts to create a healthy, equitable, and sustainable food system. He is currently the chef-in-residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, where he creates programming that celebrates the intersection of food, farming, health, activism, art, culture, and the African Diaspora. His work has been featured in the New York Times and Washington Post and on CBS This Morning and on NPR's All Things Considered . San Francisco magazine included Bryant among the 11 Smartest People in the Bay Area Food Scene and Fast Company named him one of 9 People Who Are Changing the Future of Food.