Delicious Food Memoirs

Okay, so I’m already cheating, as this isn’t quite a memoir. It’s technically listed as a cookbook and features Gullah Geechee recipes. The Gullah people are the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to America, and hail from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Their language is a West African-based creole called “Geechee.”

Raiford inherited his grandmother’s Georgia farm in 2010. The farm had been passed down the family line starting in 1874 when his formerly enslaved great-great-great grandfather bought the land. Raiford decided to return to this farm and tend to it, thereby reconnecting with his ancestral home. I’ve included this cookbook in a list about memoirs be because Raiford tells the tale of his family, and the Gullah people, connecting them all to the more than 100 recipes within. There are 100 photos of recipes as well as important Raiford family pictures that really serve to anchor the food to history and the Black American experience.

Book Club Bonus: I think it’d be cool to make a recipe from the book and bring it to a bookclub meet-up (or have it handy for virtual discussions). Discuss if you think many see Black American cuisine as quintessentially American and how food has reflected Black American history, making sure to discuss both bondage and African roots.

This is a dual memoir by Black chef Bailey from Queens and white investor Morisano from Staten Island who opened a restaurant in Savannah, GA. The restaurant, The Grey, was converted from a formerly segregated Greyhound bus station and is highly acclaimed. This memoir shows how their partnership (they didn’t really know each other initially) and the restaurant came to be. There is humor, honesty, and insight throughout as it tackles topics like business, bias, food, and racism.

Book Club Bonus: Discuss what you think of the authors’ decision on whether to keep the “Colored Waiting Room” sign. What do you think that decision added to or took away from the overall experience?

Hamilton didn’t start off wanting to open a restaurant. She had gotten an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, even. But, the twenty years of self-discovery that had found her learning about hospitality from people all over the world, learning her lesson from crimes committed in her youth, and trying to escape a broken family led her to eventually opening a successful restaurant that has grossed $2 million within a year. Anthony Bourdain once called this the best chef memoir ever.

Book Club Bonus: Hamilton talks about how she finds a new family in the one she gains through marriage. She also mentioned how food and hosting parties were mostly pleasant experiences growing up, but thought of having a career in food to mean having a career without meaning. Discuss the role food and hospitality played in her upbringing, and subsequently how she viewed it as an adult.