Sponsored by Blade of Secrets by Tricia Levenseller with Fierce Reads.
“Loaded with action, betrayal, slow-burn romance . . . I couldn’t put it down.” —Mary E. Pearson, the New York Times-bestselling author of The Remnant Chronicles. In Blade of Secrets, the first book in Tricia Levenseller’s exciting new YA fantasy duology, a teenage blacksmith with social anxiety is forced to go on the run to protect the world from the most powerful magical sword she’s ever made.
Welcome to Read This Book, a newsletter where I recommend one book that should absolutely be put at the top of your TBR pile. Recommended books will vary across genre and age category and include shiny new books, older books you may have missed, and some classics I suggest finally getting around to. Make space for another pile of books on your floor because here we go!
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
Michael W. Twitty is a food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian, and historical interpreter. The Cooking Gene is culinary history, cultural history, and Twitty’s personal genealogical discoveries all woven together. His U.S. geographical focus is what he refers to as the Old South, which is what he calls, “the former slaveholding states and the history and culture they collectively birthed from the days of contact through civil rights.” Twitty traces what many Americans know as southern food back to its roots through the enslaved people who developed it and back to parts of Africa as well. He brings us along with him, through stories and chats with other food historians, through his work as a cook for civil war reenactments, personal stories, and information from his deep research.
Most every page of this book taught me something I never knew or had never even considered. There were no timers in the kitchens that the enslaved cooked in, so sometimes the songs they would sing were used as timers for the cooking. How the racist trope associating watermelon with Black Americans is even more depraved than I had known, as watermelon was actually a life-saver to perpetually dehydrated enslaved people working in the fields.
Twitty shares his personal experience with genealogy as a Black person in America. It is far from simple. While the internet makes it so much easier to access things like historical records, when it comes to enslaved people and descendants, detailed notes weren’t necessarily kept. Families were broken up and sold off. Slavers didn’t necessarily keep records of where people were abducted from.
Twitty does such a fantastic and often difficult job of tying the past to our present. His writing humanizes enslaved people in ways that they often aren’t, such as how many enslaved people were sent to France for culinary school and to be taught pastry-making. These were skilled workers. If they were paid, they would have been considered professionals, even experts in their field.
This book is a brilliant study on how food, racism, power, and justice are linked.
Before I go, if you haven’t heard, we’ve got a giveaway for a chance to win an iPad Mini! Enter here.
That’s it for now, book-lovers!
Patricia
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