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 20-21, AfterwordChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Old Country”
During a trip to Europe, Twitty struggles with The fact that his white ancestors violated his Black ancestors. He must also confront a complex and often cruel discourse about race. In Ireland, Twitty is met with suspicion or mild curiosity. In London, some foods seem familiar, but Twitty feels disconnected from his British ancestors. A hotel in Liverpool, which was formerly a warehouse that supported ships traveling throughout the British Empire, including enslavement ships to the Americas, is eerie. Nothing feels like home.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Sankofa”
In the 1980s, many Black Americans both embraced and grappled with their African heritage. As Black people rejoined their families in the South, a new food culture emerged and was coopted by white Southerners, who manufactured a new Southern heritage that ignored the sins of the past. Twitty embraces the emerging discussion about Southern and African American food. He recognizes food as a complex reflection of history, culture, and economics. Food represents people.
Twitty examines the failure of African food to find its voice in American cuisine. He suggests that this is due to its failure to find a white savior who will translate the cuisine for the masses. His criticism of Southern chefs such as Sean Brock is that they do not acknowledge the African roots of Southern cuisine. Twitty looks forward to the day when he can visit Africa and connect with the food that his identity originates with.
Afterword Summary: “Family Reunion”
Twitty finally travels to Africa, where he finds the foods hauntingly familiar and spiritual in nature. He encounters a man who grows basil next to his front door, something his mother and grandmother did for good luck. He then visits Gorée Island, a site where enslaved Africans were forced from their homeland. The streets are covered in flower petals, scattered to honor the enslaved. Twitty’s tour guide tells him, “Welcome home.” As Twitty imagines what his ancestors must have felt and experienced in this place, he scatters some of his mother’s ashes in the ocean.
Chapters 20-21, Afterword Analysis
Although Twitty’s memoir is often highly expository, the author ultimately describes it as a narrative work, and many of the text’s narrative elements coalesce in the last chapters. As he examines the stories of his ancestors, weaving them into a tapestry with his own journey and the lives of his immediate family members, Twitty emerges as a protagonist who navigates internal and external conflict: Tests, allies, and enemies are revealed. Twitty meets individuals who do not understand what he is doing and complicated cultural and familial histories that cause him to question his purpose. The final chapters bring the reader to a point of conclusion and celebration.
The memoir’s concluding chapters tie together its central themes. While one theme concerns The Impact of Slavery on American Foodways, this idea is inseparable from how Southern food represents both Beauty and Ugliness, as the cuisine emerges from a history of perseverance and brutality. That same history lies within the author’s lineage, informing his journey toward Identity and Self-Discovery: While he is undeniably and proudly of African heritage, his European heritage suggests the violence and cruelty of his white ancestors, who almost certainly raped the Africans they enslaved. Twitty must confront the reality of his violent lineage even as he embodies the beauty of his heritage.
The narrative conflict persists to the last page. While Twitty’s visit to West Africa provides a stark contrast to his European excursion—in Africa he finds comfort and joy as he greets faces that mirror his own—there, too, darkness accompanies lightness, as it does throughout the work. He ends his journey at a port where kidnapped Africans were taken to the Americas against their will. But in choosing to release some of his mother’s ashes right there, he returns her to the home from which her family was abducted. The Afterword’s events provide an element of closure that typifies the ending of narrative works, yet that closure is nuanced. In fiction, the denouement is often a resolution of the story’s main conflict; in Twitty’s nonfiction narrative, the most overt conflict—confrontation with the multifaceted legacy of slavery—is something that can never be fully resolved. Instead, the Afterword provides a sense of finality by bringing the protagonist’s journey full circle and ending on the central ideas of identity and returning to one’s roots.
