42 pages • 1 hour read
Michael W. TwittyThe Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “All Creatures of Our G-D and King”
Twitty travels to Southern aquariums to better understand the fish his ancestors would have eaten. He is frustrated with his own lack of knowledge in the area, having never spent time fishing as a child. Twitty also meets a farmer who raises heritage breeds of pigs, geese, ducks, hogs, and other animals, using the same methods that early Southerners used to care for livestock. Twitty argues that African Americans have been severed from the connection to animals that they had in their homelands. Africans were skilled farmers who cared for guinea fowl, sheep, guinea hogs, and many other animals. Their complicated folklore about animals was carried over into Black Southern culture.
The hog, a central protein in the Southern diet, was a focus of celebrations at hog-killing time. The parts of the hog that white people did not want were given to enslaved workers. American hogs were fatter due to their diets, and pork consumption skyrocketed. While Italian butchers produced prosciutto, Southern cooks developed the country ham. The spices used in the slow cooking process were an influence from African palates. The Southern barbecue has a deep connection to Black enslaved people, whose pepper sauces, made from African recipes, were used to flavor meat.
Chapter 17 Summary: “The Devil’s Half Acre”
In Richmond, Virginia, the Devil’s Half Acre is an area where public auctions for tens of thousands of enslaved workers took place. On the auction block, enslaved people were treated like livestock. Women were in high demand because of their ability to have children. It did not matter if these women had families, husbands, or children of their own. The white men who bought them bought breeders.
Chapter 18 Summary: “The King’s Cuisine”
Twitty’s ancestors who worked in cotton fields experienced torture and hardship. Plantation owners wanted workers who could produce children and work in the fields on minimal diets. Twitty shares records of his enslaved family members, listing them the way they would have appeared in a farm ledger, as numerical sets of property. Cotton was woven into every aspect of African American life. African American women learned of a special cotton root tea that could be used to terminate a pregnancy. Twitty notes that his ancestor who had been raped by a white plantation owner’s son might have considered this remedy, although in the end she gave birth.
Every fall, Twitty visits Southern fields and spends time alone, picking cotton and listening to work songs on his iPod. The work makes him tired and sore, but he is keenly aware that there is no one waiting to punish or hurt him if he does not work hard enough or fast enough. Twitty’s grandfather Gonze had grown cotton before moving to Washington, DC. He delights in showing his grandson his old farm, pointing out where he placed his last cotton bale so that his grandson could one day write a book.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Crossroads”
African American food has always been about more than fuel. Twitty describes it as “medicine and a gateway to good fortune, and a mystical lubricant between the living and the dead” (365). Twitty’s African ancestors kept various rituals and traditions surrounding food alive. One was placing a small portion of food on the ground for one’s ancestors before starting to eat a meal. Twitty’s grandmother shared with him many religious associations with food, the remnants of African American spirituality. Religious ceremonies were often accompanied by feasts. The traditions of Sunday dinners and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day hail from these.
When Twitty’s mother dies during the writing of the book, he is struck with the grief of losing her, as well as sorrow for the life she had to live in a country that devalued her at every turn. She herself had not been impressed by her Sierra Leone ancestry, but when she learned that the Mende had tried to overtake the Amistad and return home, she felt pride in their bravery and grit. With her now gone, Twitty mourns the places where their paths diverged and the loss of where they met. Twitty learns of a grief ritual in Sierra Leone, during which mourners weep together in the center of their village. This is “the death wail at the crossroads” (374), and it is cathartic.
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
Twitty’s narrative focuses in these chapters on the auction blocks where men, women, and children were sold, possibly “down the river” to plantations in the Deep South (323). He shares historical accounts of these transactions and the paid advertisements for human “chattel.” Men and women were advertised as good cooks, further proof of the culinary imprint Black enslaved people had made and would continue to make on the American palate. Twitty shares the historical ledgers that list his family members alongside oats, mules, and land.
Twitty’s annual labor in cotton fields is important to his Identity and Self-Discovery. Through it he seeks to understand the line that connects him to his ancestors and King Cotton. His identity is further rooted in the story of his grandfather who worked on a cotton farm as a young man. Twitty describes the stark black ugliness of cotton fields after harvest. He also describes his disgust over his bagged lunch, which resembles what his ancestors would have eaten in the fields and represents the devastation, starvation, and cruelty of slavery. After lunch, he pops in his earbuds to listen to songs with roots in enslaved communities, and there he finds beauty. As he works, he envisions his ancestors around him, singing together despite being looked after by a man with a whip.
The contrast of their tenacity and fervor with the harsh brutality of their circumstances speaks to the dual nature of life, its beauty and its ugliness. The “death wail at the crossroads” (374), which he learns about after his mother’s death, also represents a duality—a profound grief that also involves a cathartic release.
