AgBookClub’s July selection, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, by Michael W. Twitty, is a timely look at race and food in the Old South. There’s something special about Southern food. Barbeque. Soul food. Comfort food like biscuits and greens, okra and gumbo. But who owns those foods? What are their origins?
This book explores these fraught questions and more as the author, a culinary historian, traces the roots of his own family through the food they ate and the kitchens in which it was prepared. He suggests that today, Southern food may be an indispensable tool to bring Americans together around the table. As Twitty writes, “We are unwitting inheritors of a story with many sins that bears the fruit of the possibility of ten times the redemption.”
Here’s what you need to do this month:
Get the book. Buy it, borrow it, download and listen to it, read it over your neighbor’s shoulder — we don’t care. But don’t steal the book. 😉
Read the book.
- Week 1: Chapters 1 – 4 [pages 1 – 80] (Twitter chat on 7/1)
- Week 2: Chapters 5 – 9 [pages 81 – 160] (Twitter chat on 7/8)
- Week 3: Chapters 10 – 12 [pages 161 – 238] (Twitter chat on 7/15)
- Week 4: Chapters 13 – 17 [pages 239 – 336] (Twitter chat on 7/22)
- Week 5: Chapters 18 – 21 [pages 337 – 414] (Twitter chat on 7/29)
Join the chat (#AgBookClub) on Wednesdays at 8:00pm Central on Twitter. Learn how to participate in a Twitter chat here. While we hope you can participate in our discussion every week, we know that everyone has busy schedules. We always include general questions following the topic(s) of the book that can be answered by anyone, so please don’t hesitate to jump in the Twitter chat if you didn’t have a chance to read the section we’re discussing. We welcome any and all to join the discussion!
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