Michael W. Twitty
highly-reviewedAbout Michael W. Twitty
Speech topics
How to Talk About Slavery: Having the talk with each other and our neighbors about the Foundational Institution
Enslavement, emancipation, reconstruction and deconstruction are intersectional with other parts of American civilization and unfortunately having conversations about them have become verboten in a push to unravel the progressive century. This program will seek to restore sanity and clarity as we face this cornerstone American issue head on and within both national and global contexts.
Speaking videos
Media coverage
Michael Twitty's 'Cooking Gene': Searching for roots in food, family ...
Should there ever be a competition for most interesting man in the world, Michael W. Twitty would be a serious contender. A self-taught independent culinary ...
Michael Twitty, the African American Jewish writer, is poised to give ...
Michael Twitty discusses the connection between African American and Jewish diaspora's cultural connection to food.
Michael Twitty's 'The Cooking Gene' Explores Intersection of Culture ...
Michael Twitty's book, 'The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old ... Image: "The Cooking Gene" by Michael W. Twitty.
Books by Michael W. Twitty
“Recipes from the American South” (2025)
Recipes from the American South
“Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew” (2022)
The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food. In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty's own passage to and within Judaism. As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul. Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.
“Rice: a Savor the South cookbook (Savor the South Cookbooks)” (2021)
Among the staple foods most welcomed on southern tables—and on tables around the world—rice is without question the most versatile. As Michael W. Twitty observes, depending on regional tastes, rice may be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; as main dish, side dish, and snack; in dishes savory and sweet. Filling and delicious, rice comes in numerous botanical varieties and offers a vast range of scents, tastes, and textures depending on how it is cooked. In some dishes, it is crunchingly crispy; in others, soothingly smooth; in still others, somewhere right in between. Commingled or paired with other foods, rice is indispensable to the foodways of the South. As Twitty's fifty-one recipes deliciously demonstrate, rice stars in Creole, Acadian, soul food, Low Country, and Gulf Coast kitchens, as well as in the kitchens of cooks from around the world who are now at home in the South. Exploring rice's culinary history and African diasporic identity, Twitty shows how to make the southern classics as well as international dishes—everything from Savannah Rice Waffles to Ghanaian Crab Stew. As Twitty gratefully sums up, "Rice connects me to every other person, southern and global, who is nourished by rice's traditions and customs."
“The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South” (2017)
A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.
At a glanceMichael W. Twitty
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