Synopsis
Ntozake Shange offers this eclectic tribute to black cuisine as a true food of life, one that reflects the tenacious spirit and powerful history of a people. With recipes that include everything from Cousin Eddie's Shark with Breadfruit to Collard Greens to Bring You Money, Shange instructs us in the nuances of a cuisine born on the slave ships of the Middle Passage, spiced by the jazz of Duke Ellington, and shared by all members of the African Diaspora. From the flyin' fish controversy (yes, that's right, flyin' fish) between Trinidad and Tobago, to a union of spirits in the once-divided nation of Nicaragua, we enter a world where adaptation and experimentation are a matter of course, where history and pain have forged nations, but food has founded culture.
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Review
Infused with a down-home feel and vernacular rhythms . . . this slim, lively book stimulates and elucidates, and is well worth chewing on.--Luis H. Francia, The Village Voice
"Shange stirs and simmers the soul and moves the reader/eater/cook to rethink every morsel of Pan-African history, personal celebration, and global pain that enters our lives when we gather around her magical hearth to laugh, to cry--but most indispensably--to eat."--Edwidge Danticat, author of The Farming of Bones "This culinary memoir . . . is as valuable for its inspirational and factual nuggets as it is for its unusual recipes. . . . Soul-nourishing."--Carmela Ciuraru, Entertainment Weekly "A captivating collection of African-American food memories, meditations and recipes." --Kathy Martin, Miami Herald "Shange achieves . . . revolutionary splendor. She wraps history and legend and recipes and folklore around one big roti . . . makes a gumbo out of memories and laughter and recipes and black vernacular . . . throws spicy metaphors into recipes that have traveled from Africa and Brazil and the Caribbean and Brixton, England."--American Visions "A fervent, richly impassioned chronicle of African American experience."--BooklistAbout the Author
Award-winning playwright, novelist, and poet Ntozake Shange is author of Liliane; Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo; and for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, among other works. She is associate professor of English at Prairie View A & M University.
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