Koshersoul
The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“Twitty makes the case that Blackness and Judaism coexist in beautiful harmony, and this is manifested in the foods and traditions from both cultures that Black Jews incorporate into their daily lives…Twitty wishes to start a conversation where people celebrate their differences and embrace commonalities. By drawing on personal narratives, his own and others’, and exploring different cultures, Twitty’s book offers important insight into the journeys of Black Jews.”—Library Journal
“A fascinating, cross-cultural smorgasbord grounded in the deep emotional role food plays in two influential American communities.”—Booklist
The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food.
In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them.
The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism.
As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul.
Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twitty stuffs his follow-up to James Beard Award winner The Cooking Gene with wide-ranging ideas as generously as he fills kreplach with collards. "You don't have to be Black, gay, or Jewish," Twitty writes at the book's outset, "but if you are, we have a little something to kibbitz about before we nosh." What follows is a rich call-and-response between the academic and the personal as Twitty explores the shared customs and cuisines of his African and Jewish roots. In conversations with everyone from teenagers he teaches at a Hebrew school to scholars like T.J. Tallie, author of Queering Colonial Natal, he meditates on Black queerness, the tradition of gathering in both Jewish and Black culture, their continued "gestures toward true inclusion" in American society, and the Black Jewish community's "resistan to engaging in the flashpoints and crises of identity that other people have against us." Evocative descriptions of food provide a rich through line: A rundown of an African American seder plate suggests a chicken bone in place of a lamb shank bone, while Southern selections are given for tashlich, the tradition of sprinkling crumbs into the water to symbolize doing away with sins before Yom Kippur (with peach cobbler to atone for gossiping). Serving up a hefty helping of heart and wit, Twitty's narrative is thrilling in its originality.
