{"id":7764,"date":"2017-10-26T14:32:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T18:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastronomyatbu.com\/?p=7764"},"modified":"2018-03-28T17:49:06","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T21:49:06","slug":"reflections-on-michael-twittys-pepin-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/2017\/10\/26\/reflections-on-michael-twittys-pepin-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Michael Twitty’s Pepin Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 24th, Michael Twitty visited BU to present a Pepin Lecture on his book, The Cooking Gene. This is Gastronomy student Ariana Gunderson’s take on the lecture.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Image from youtube.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBut, America is not ready for you.\u201d So said an editor at a major publishing house to Michael Twitty, when he proposed a book tracing the food history of his family and black American foodways in 2012. It turns out that Twitty, culinary historian and minor twitter celebrity (@KosherSoul) got the last laugh. Following a burst of media attention for his take on the Paula Deen scandal, publishers decided America was in fact ready to hear the story of Michael\u2019s family and his intersectional identities – Twitty identifies as black, Jewish, Southern and gay. In his new book, The Cooking Gene<\/em>, Twitty imparts an important narrative long silenced by white power structures in publishing, academia, media, and education.<\/p>\n

Invited to BU for the P\u00e9pin Lecture Series, Twitty shared the story of his research and his book in an impassioned lecture peppered with Yiddish and pop culture references. In his talk, Twitty argued that when it comes to food, narratives matter.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Image from sierraclub.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWho owns Southern food? Who created Southern food?\u201d These questions are pertinent to current discussions of appropriation and the persistent impact of colonialism on the present day, but Twitty reframed them to emphasize narrative: \u201cJust because the oppressor and oppressed share the same food does not mean we can create a false equivalence.\u201d Twitty argues that the narrative of a black southerner eating black eyed peas is fundamentally different from the narrative of a white southerner eating those same peas, and that the complications of those narratives are what matter to discussions of race and food.<\/p>\n

Narrative also matters in the histories we tell ourselves and our children. Twitty objected to the characterizations of the influences of black cuisines on the American foodscape as \u201ccontributions.\u201d This cultural transaction was theft<\/em>, he asserted, not a \u201ccontribution\u201d made in exchange for \u201crape, whips, and chains.\u201d Telling the stories of black foodways is a small but imperative step to rectifying the whitewashing of our national historical narrative, but it is crucial to be honest about the conditions of that history.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, Twitty argued that personal narrative matters. With each small genealogical epiphany \u2013 the name of his great-great grandmother, the current locations of his distant relatives, the foods cooked by his Igbo ancestors \u2013 Twitty\u2019s sense of self- and community-identity gained context and legitimacy.\u00a0 He encourages everyone, but especially black Americans, to research their own family history and genealogy as he has, to add depth and emplacement to their personal narratives.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion of his talk, Twitty assigned the audience some homework (his experience as a Hebrew School teacher was apparent here).\u00a0 \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where you are in your life\u2019s journey,\u201d said Twitty. \u201cGo home and write your food biography.\u201d\u00a0 This biography is to be as exhaustive as possible, to include everything \u2013 even one\u2019s trips to McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen,\u201d Twitty instructed the audience, \u201cif your elders are still alive, interview them.\u201d If not, write down everything you can remember about the food they bought, cooked, ate, or talked about. Elders need not be only blood relatives, they can be anyone in your community.\u00a0 This documentation and preservation of food histories is exactly the work Twitty has completed in incredible depth for his own family history, a methodology especially important for lifting up the voices of the chronically silenced. \u201cAnyone can do this!\u201d Twitty asserted.<\/p>\n

Ready or not, Twitty is precisely the food historian America needs.<\/p>\n

\n

Don\u2019t forget to sign up for the next installment of the P\u00e9pin Lecture Series on November 8th<\/sup>, where BU Gastronomy\u2019s own Megan Elias presents her new book, Food on the Page<\/em>. Register here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On October 24th, Michael Twitty visited BU to present a Pepin Lecture on his book, The Cooking Gene. This is Gastronomy student Ariana Gunderson’s take on the lecture. \u201cBut, America is not ready for you.\u201d So said an editor at a major publishing house to Michael Twitty, when he proposed a book tracing the food […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14625,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15,17,21,22],"tags":[357,391,597,674,850],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8169,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7764\/revisions\/8169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}