It also reminds readers that rice, as we know it in the South, is inextricably linked to the agricultural and culinary contributions of enslaved Africans. Twitty’s Rice is part of a University of North Carolina Press series that recognizes the history and influence of Southern ingredients like pecans, okra, crabs, and oysters. “And I think it's still important that people realize that, that's not how this goes - that we're the center of this history.” “It has so often been told, much like barbecue and other areas of our food culture, that we're tertiary, we're not primary,” said Twitty. Recognizing the ubiquity of rice in Asia, Latin America, and other parts of the world, Twitty doesn’t claim Africans invented rice instead, he presents a forgotten and often ignored history of African influence in how rice is cultivated, prepared, and served throughout the South and the world. Twitty’s new book, Rice, links the proliferation of rice across the South to its African origins. He also saw - nearly everywhere he went - a pot of rice, a dish that’s come to define part of his culinary career. As he watched people chopping onions and peppers by hand, he reflected on his own grandmother and culinary upbringing.

As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the South's past.Before the pandemic, Michael Twitty found himself visiting Ghanaian chop bars in his travels around Ghana. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and visits Civil War battlefields in Virginia, synagogues in Alabama, and black-owned organic farms in Georgia. Twitty travels from the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields to tell of the struggles his family faced and how food enabled his ancestors' survival across three centuries.

In this unique memoir, 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. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who 'owns' it is one of the most provocative touchpoints in our ongoing struggles over race. Twitty brings a fresh perspective to 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 from slavery to freedom.

Rice by michael twitty