Chapter four is focused on stories surrounding Twitty’s conversion to Judaism and his discoveries of food and community within. He tells a story of himself at the age of seven having seen a movie that led him to decide he was now becoming Jewish. He tells of how his mother scared him away from the idea at the time with the threat of his re-circumcision, but this only furthered his curiosity and he converted as an adult. His curiosities lead him to discover recipes and dishes he quickly began learning to make, and he clearly has a deep love for the Jewish foodscape.
“Jewish food is a matter of text expressed on the table. Entering the Jewish foodscape changed my life. Jewish food and black food crisscross each other throughout history. They are both cuisines where homeland and exile interplay. Ideas and emotions are ingredients – satire, irony, longing, resistance – and you have to eat the food to extract that meaning.” (pg.70)
Throughout the chapter Twitty examines the intersections of black and Jewish culture and foodscapes, citing examples of both persecution and togetherness through food and examining his own line of questioning. He later shares about a conference he attended and presented at in an Alabama Synagog. His presentation on kosher soul food sounds mouthwatering, not to mention the foods he prepared with volunteers. But it was his reflection on the conclusion of the conference that really stuck with me. He met a Scotish-Irish lesbian who was also a convert, and the keeper of her family recipe box. He described the feeling with her as “immediate familiensinn“. He then meets two sisters from Germany one of whom calls him “mishpocheh” which is a Yiddish term for a large family comprised of blood, marriage, and close friends. These intersecting identities seem like they created an unusual feeling of safety among strangers. The chapter closes with a really amazing-looking recipe for West African Brisket.
“Compulsory illiteracy damned many of us. We couldn’t write down our own stories. We had to tell them to others, and this caused facts and words to be bent. I wonder what history would have looked like if every man and woman could have written down or passed down a written account of their lives. This is not in our treasure trove.” (pg. 84)
Chapter five is entitled Missing Pieces and it highlights the ways in which slavery and the traumas and experiences of enslaved people effect the prevalence of written black history and general recollection of people’s enslaved ancestors. Twitty discusses the challenges of tracing the ancestry of enslaved and formerly enslaved people, noting how names were often left out of census reports and other records. He discusses looking through records in the Library of Virginia, how enslaved people where recorded by their sex, age, and color, “The dehumanization never ends” (pg. 82)
Twitty also focuses this chapter on identity in general, and where we draw our identity from. The way in which enslaved people were named by white captors is as Twitty says, a way of marking them as property, ensuring the removal of identity and individualism. I find names to be a huge part of our identity, perhaps not even because we have some historical attachment to the name but because it is our foremost representation of ourselves. In person, on paper, online, wherever we are our name follows us. We are in a day and age in which a person can change their name if they so please, and I’d like to think that we are also moving into a time in which that is more widely accepted. Names promote ourselves and therefore our individualism, they’re the title of our story, and the removal of them by force takes not only that piece of identity but also their descendants’ access to their history.
“What is in a name? Certainly something of a face but not really a full identity. Cudjo and Phibba, names based on names of Akan origin from what is now Ghana, tell us a narrative of persistence or resistance, or even of white accommodation to the folkways of the enslaved. If you’re enslaved, your name can change at any time.” (pg. 83)
Twitty closes the chapter by discussing the usability of DNA testing for tracing African ancestry, and how recent advances in genetic testing have allowed people to access information about their genealogical history in a level of detail that was nearly impossible before. But what was more interesting to me was when he talked about the pushback he’s received about wanting to access his history, when people asked him “Why can’t you just be American?”. I understand wanting to hold on to that part of yourself, and wanting to know about the people who came before you. We are each made from egg cells that our mother developed a week before her own birth, we are connected in an unbreakable way to our ancestors in that way. No one is obligated to seek out that part of themselves, but should we not all have that right?
“We have become a nation within a nation of passionate genealogists and heritage fanatics. The curse of not knowing more has been turned upside down by the desire to know all.” (pg. 89)
The sixth chapter was Twitty’s account of an interview with his grandmother about stories of her father, Joe Todd. This chapter is hard to write a summary about without retelling most of the stories, but it made me very emotional and I would definitely recommend this chapter to people wanting to write about their own food histories. Intertwined with his grandmother’s account of her father defending her mother in a courtroom, and building stilts with his son Nathan, were stories of the food he and his family made and enjoyed together. Joe was known for his southern BBQ and blackberry cobbler, and Twitty’s grandmother remembers how he made gravy from sausages his own mother had made. I would love for my writing to feel something like this, both a narrative of my life and my food history.
Writing prompt #1 Where do I see my personal identities present in my food?
I can divide the most common meals of my life by the places I have lived, so a lot of my foods hold identities relating to location. I grew up in England, giving me a menu of English foods or foods common to my English family that hold that identity regardless of the origin of the dish. Food from England are things like my mom’s chicken broth soup, leftover turkey and ham pie, boiled eggs and toast every Monday because we have to get to girl scouts by 5pm. While some of these foods are things we would still have in the U.S, we transitioned them out of the regular menu as we adapted to living in America.
I also live with an eating disorder, which is a controversial thing to put in my identities list but it feels relevant and this is about me so screw it. There are foods I wont eat anymore because of the time in my life in which my eating disorder was most present (14-17). I am choosing not to disclose these because I think that putting your E.D meals on the internet is generally unhelpful, but I will say that foods that were restricted in our house were for obvious reasons my favorite, and therefore caused a love-hate relationship with food and eating.
I have autism and ADHD, which has always made it hard for me to try new foods, and I struggle with unfamiliar textures, as well as some I just try to avoid. I have a list of “safe foods” that I know I can almost always eat, but if I eat it too much I can’t eat it anymore. I used to love these crunchy rice crackers and they make me nauseos now. I am fearful of new foods, and I’m worried I’ll eat something I don’t like and throw up or embarrass myself.
I am a food studies major and a cooking enthusiast, I really love to try new dishes and cooking techniques. I feel so accomplished when I have learned something new, but the best feeling is seeing someone enjoy my food. I want to learn how to cook duck, rabbit, venison, boar, I want to learn how to make marshmallows and puff pastry crust. I would love to just create food all day for people.
Writing Prompt #2 Where do I see my personal identities intersect in my food?
My fear of food combined with my love of food is the most prevalent intersection of identities for me. My fear of food stems from both my eating disorder and my neuro-divergency, I fear food for its calories and for its unknownness. A prime example of how they intersect with my love of food and cooking is seafood. The ocean holds a cornucopia of flavors, textures, potential cooking techniques and amazing dishes. I desperately want to cook amazing shrimp, salmon, snapper, oysters, crab cakes, I could go on. But the thought of tasting them genuinely scares me, I want to like them but I am scared to let them pass my lips.
I also think my adult life passion for food intersects with my childhood identities of food and family, I feel most satisfied when cooking for someone I love, I want my food to be its very best when I am cooking for a person who feels like family. Meal time with my best friend is a tradition I would never want to lose, I have always found food to be most enjoyable in the company of people who’s company compliments the meal.
My current cooking also represents a mishmash of the places I have lived and the times of my life that have changed my diet. Much of my cooking takes the parts of my childhood meals I enjoyed the most and made them mine, the same way I assume most family recipes are handed down when there is no family cookbook. Sometimes I email my mom for a recipe because I want the flavors but not the texture, I create something of my own from my mothers creations.
Personal Menu Development
This week I focused on talking to my immediate family about foods we ate when I was growing up. I created a working list of the things I came up with while talking to them and doing my own brainstorming, I’ll probably keep adding for the next few weeks and pick out my menu items around week 5 or 6.