James Beard Award-winning author Michael Twitty explores the intersection of food and his black, Jewish identity in his new book.
Michael Twitty
hide title
change the subtitles
Michael Twitty
James Beard Award-winning author Michael Twitty explores the intersection of food and his black, Jewish identity in his new book.
Michael Twitty
The best estimates suggest that there are about 140,000 African American Jews living in the United States. James Beard Award-winning author and historian Michael Twitty uses the term “border crossing” to describe the community, which includes itself.
“We are people who have always existed but never had a voice,” he writes in his new book, Koshersoul: An African-American Jew’s Journey of Faith and Food.
Twitty continues:
Jewish food and black food intersect with each other throughout history. Both are cuisines where homeland and exile interact. Ideas, emotions, and ingredients—satire, irony, longing, resistance—and you have to eat the food to extract that meaning. The sustenance of both diasporas depends on memory. One memory is the clearing of people’s journey and the other is the small bits and pieces of individual lives formed by ancient paths and patterns. Food is an archive, a keeper of secrets.
We sit down with Twitty to talk food, tradition and identity.
Like what you hear? Find out more about our programs online.
