SAVOR
Chef Michael Twitty and Colonial Williamsburg explore the Black and queer contributions to America and its culinary traditions.
There’s a rich and largely unknown stor y about the contributions from Black and LGBTQ+ Americans to the creation of our country during the colonial era. Those legacies include much of what we now cherish as American cuisine, as gay chef Michael Twitty explains in his awardwinning book, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. Twitty describes The Cooking Gene as “a blend of culinary history, personal memoir, and social commentary sprinkled with a few recipes.” He chose this approach for a simple
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Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia
BRET HARTMAN (TWITTY) ; TOSHIO KISHIYAMA-GETTY IMAGES(WILLIAMSBURG)
Deep Roots
reason. “I wanted my whole being represented,” he told our sister publication The Advocate earlier this year. “I’m an African-American, I’m gay, I’m Jewish, I’m of Southern heritage, I’m a bear, I’m all of these things crossing paths. And I wanted to write a book that responded to that history and those stories in a precise and personal way.” Twitty traces Southern cooking and his own heritage back through the lives of enslaved Black people (and white plantation owners), back through the Great Passage, back to Mother Africa. He now helps others do this genealogical work as well, and he says exploring the culinary traditions of one’s historical homeland is different than doing so as a tourist. He says, “The first thing you look for are familiar smells and flavors. The trip to the local openair market is usually the ice breaker. The street food, the tone of the arguments, the gestures of hospitality and altruism get you ‘back home,’ to a place you’ve spiritually been, but not physically. We get cooking, we haul in fishing nets, we learn how traditional ingredients are made, and we round all of that out with naming ceremonies and other activities that bring us back into the fold.” While Africans brought many of their traditional recipes with them to America, they became innovators here as well. It’s a history begging to be rediscovered. Twitty’s advice for reconnecting with our ignored history is to “Explore alternative spaces that honor local cultures and oppressed and marginalized communities. Look around... how are people treated? Which museums tell the truth?” Twitty is helping to create an alternative space and further truth-telling by collaborating with Colonial Williamsburg to increase awareness of the role of Africans in colonial-era society. He helped establish the Sankofa African Virginian Garden at Colonial Williamsburg to demonstrate what free and enslaved Black gardeners cultivated (for themselves and white settlers).
9/4/21 10:00 AM
