‘I Want People to Eat Their Way Across the Diasporas’

What is at the root of what one tastes? This is not an Alex Haley-like koan, but rather a historical and spiritual question.

Early in my career as a writer, I met Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, author of Vibration Cooking or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. When she lived in Washington, D.C., we met on occasion at the local Safeway supermarket. Smart-Grosvenor was an American culinary anthropologist—and a food writer with a wonderful sense of humor.

Culinary historian Michael Twitty’s The Cooking Gene falls in the lineage of Smart-Grosvenor and maybe even the work of novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston.

I first met Twitty years ago at Howard University in D.C. He was usually sitting in the main office of the African-American studies department in conversation with the secretary, Joyce Rose. One day I became aware of a change in his dress. Twitty may have been the only black person on Howard’s campus wearing a yarmulke.

Being black and Jewish is not new but remains intriguing. Howard is a place that prides itself on attracting a large number of students from Africa and the Caribbean. It upholds the tradition of advocating racial integration as well as the tenets of black nationalism. It’s an institution that can enhance one’s understanding of the various factors that define the black experience. Twitty’s growth and transformation made me think of Carolivia Herron, author of Always an Olivia, in which she traces her own lineage to Sephardic Jews who found refuge on the Georgia coast in a community of descendants of enslaved Africans.

There are many shared traditions and alliances between blacks and Jews; there is also at times much controversy. But the differences are minor when contrasted with the work blacks and Jews continue to do together in defending civil and human rights in our society.

Since my departure from Howard, I’ve followed Twitty’s career as a culinary and cultural historian. His work is a study of the role food plays in defining community and strengthening families.

The Cooking Gene, 2018 winner of the James Beard Award, should be placed on a bookshelf next to Tom Dent’s Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement. Twitty’s memoir traces his ancestry through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Each chapter includes recipes for the hungry, stirred with intellectual nourishment.

“The Old South is where I cook,” writes Twitty. “The Old South is a place where food tells me who I am. ... The Old South is where the story of our food might just tell America where it’s going.” His tales from the cooking pot should be shared with anyone who wishes to dine at the communal table. The words here are just an appetizer. There is more in the pot ready to be served.

E. Ethelbert Miller: What was it like being black and Jewish at a historical African-American school such as Howard University?

Michael W. Twitty: During my main time at Howard, I was just beginning to explore Jewish cultural politics and history via two courses jointly taught between American University and Howard. I was very fortunate to have that experience.

At age 7, you told your mother you were Jewish. Changing one’s faith is not always easy. What was the response from your family when you decided to embrace Judaism? Not much. My maternal family was really nondenominational. I never got the feeling anyone cared much. At age 7, my mom scared the hell out of me by promising I would be taken away for an impromptu bris. She didn’t have time for my whims. But I officially became Jewish in my 20s.

The Cooking Gene was published in 2017. Since that time you’ve quickly developed a public persona. Do you find yourself serving as a bridge between the Jewish and black communities? Are social justice issues important to you? I do, but to a point. I don’t want to be emblematic of the flashpoints. That makes me a fireman, not a thinker. The day-to-day work of spiritual healing and repair, understanding, and safe boundaries and entry points ... that excites me, not fighting little social media battles. Social justice has become a dirty term for some on the Right, and I really think it is for them because advocacy for historically marginalized groups is a threat. So, the work must continue. I like being a conduit and communicator. It’s hard work, but you do it.

Early in The Cooking Gene, you discuss a way of viewing ancestry as “action and reaction.” What does that mean? It’s a dialogue. It’s a call and response. There are unquestionable analogies to our music and conversation. You also realize you create in many ways how the next chapter will go. And then beyond that.

The black tradition is specific about our relationship with the past being an active and very personal one. Jewish traditions have their own affirmations of past informing the present. Both demand a kind of moral and ethical descent alongside a physical and genetic one. You become responsible for a connection and then you pass that on.

In The Cooking Gene you write, “Our food was never just food. It was medicine and a gateway to good fortune, and a mystical lubricant between the living and the dead.” How does the preparing and eating of kosher foods mix with the Southern cuisine? Is it really “a gateway to good fortune”? Black women [working in Jewish kitchens] innovated the fusion food of immigrant Jewish cuisines and Afro-Southern foodways. I think it’s important to note that these women kept the family food kosher more than most of those families might have cared to themselves. When African-American women were employed post-slavery—through and beyond the civil rights era—they essentially used the kitchen as a negotiation space between old-world European Jewish foodways and deeply rooted African-based Southern traditions. Matzoh ball gumbo and matzoh meal fried chicken are real, as are sweet potato tzimmes or black-eyed peas and kishkes!

The traditional food isn't all fried and doused in butter. It's based on natural foods elevated in their natural taste to the state of delicacy. This kind of nuanced simplicity is at the heart of it. Southern black food is remarkably healthy, but the key is not to overindulge in the celebration foods. Fried chicken and macaroni and cheese are definitely celebration foods. This food came from the water, air, and earth—not just pots of lard.

My AfroAshkefardi [African-Ashkenazic-Sephardic] food is culinary intersectionality. I want people to eat their way across the diasporas without feeling some kind of awful, trite, forced fusion. This is about the energy and possibilities of the crossroads, not the transgressions of culture bubbles and boundaries. There are stories to tell, ethereal ingredients to include—satire, survival, ostentation, pain—and all are necessary parts of the food I cook.

Is there a spiritual side to wanting to discover and know one's roots? How does genealogy help one confront the history of oppression? Genealogy is critical. Especially if you're oppressed. Erasure is always there, threatening your very being. The Torah itself has huge sections devoted to detailing the roots and family lines of the patriarchs and beyond. Truth or not, it speaks to a very deep need to be anchored and valid when a constant urge to annihilate you is ever present, ready to scrub the record clean.

For me knowing what I know about my West and Central African forebears is a special kind of knowledge that taps into spaces of mind, body, and spirit that were inaccessible before. The ethnicities I come from feel like distinct family lines feeding my character and drive. That's incredibly reassuring. I'm more convinced than ever that my ancestors are my board of directors.

It appears we are just sitting down at the table and passing around the first plates of research. The Cooking Gene includes a very good bibliography. What are the challenges facing future scholars in your field? We need to understand the 50 cultures and more that fed into the streams of humans that made up the slave trade. Language, material culture, beliefs must all be fully investigated. We have to look at them from both a historical lens and a contemporary perspective. Another thing is that we have to stop pretending that we aren't losing history now. We have to interview black folks who migrated or immigrated. Our African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx foodways did not become static. They have evolved and changed and taken on regional forms and realities. It's so critical that we get the voices of that generation, so we can update our narrative and preserve those voices.

I've always felt that the center of one's home should be the kitchen and not the living room or bedroom. What's the power of the kitchen? The word hearth, meaning the central fire where food preparation happened, is related to the word heart. In an African context, the hearth is a sacred and holy space. It's a natural gathering place, a memory space, a clearing house of emotions; it's where we become families.