SML contributor wins James Beard Awards

Congratulations to SML contributor Michael Twitty, whose book ‘The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South’ has won the 2018 James Beard Foundation award for writing and for book of the year.

Twitty authors Afroculinaria, a food blog, and is a Judaic studies teacher from the Washington D.C. metro area.

On his blog, he describes himself as “a food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian and historical interpreter personally charged with preparing, preserving and promoting African American foodways and its parent traditions in Africa and her Diaspora and its legacy in the food culture of the American South.”

In 2013, Smoky Mountain Living invited Twitty to author an article for its Mountain Voices section regarding how the enslaved from West and Central Africa influenced Appalachian food and culture.

“Food remains one of the more powerful emblems of this exchange of culture,” Twitty wrote in volume 13, issue 5 of SML. “Whites in the Upper South were well known for being drawn to the cornshucking gatherings where the banjo and bones, fiddle and gumbo boxes—early substitutes for drums—would play late into the night as enslaved communities gathered to bring in the corn crop. Along with the fascination surrounding music and dance, inevitably new foods found a role as well. Sorghum cane, introduced early from Africa, graced many a biscuit baked for those gatherings. “Cane” has been mistakenly identified as a Native American contribution to Appalachian cookery—instead it is another marker of the Afrilachian influence.”

Congratulations Michael Twitty on your double Beard Award selection!

Read Twitty’s SML article here: http://www.smliv.com/departments/goodreads/afri-lachia/