5 Good Books to Read About Your Afro Caribbean Culinary Heritage

Interested to learn more about your Afro Caribbean Culinary Heritage?

Here are 5 good books to read that will set you on the right path.

Learn about the origins and movements of crops, about the black farming movement and the foods brought to the New World by Africans, along with those they adopted here.

In the Shadow of Slavery - Africa's botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World.
by Judith Carney and, Richard Nicholas Rosomoff.
In this exciting, original, and groundbreaking book, Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff draw on archaeological records, oral histories, and the accounts of slave ship captains to show how slaves' food plots—“botanical gardens of the dispossessed”—became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies.

Freedom Farmers - Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement
By Monica M. White.
Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.

The Cooking Gene -
A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
by Michael W. Twitty.
Michael W. Twitty, 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.

Farming While Black -
Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land
By Leah Penniman.
Farming While Black is the first comprehensive “how to” guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color.

High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America
by Jessica B. Harris.
Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. Harris has spent much of her life researching the food and foodways of the African Diaspora. High on the Hog is the culmination of years of her work, and the result is a most engaging history of African American cuisine. Harris takes the reader on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way.


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