This was a really incredible look at African American historic foodways, with a really careful look at specificity of geography and time. Twitty manages to draw all of these threads together without it feeling confusing very often, though sometimes the sea of names--which are necessary to both give credit to those from whom he's drawing his work, as well as his own genealogy and those of others--gets a little confusing, and I might have been better equipped to deal with if I had not tried to read this whole book in like four days. I will say that as someone who comes at genealogy testing from a perspective of Native people trying to keep a grasp on their sovereignty, some of the stuff on DNA testing rubbed me the wrong way--not that Twitty is guilty of the levels of like genealogy crimes as someone like Elizabeth Warren, but it was uncomfortable to see him talk about it without mentioning those issues.

But those parts of it regardless, this is definitely a powerful and important read, and I really recommend it to people who want to think about food more critically, and consider its history alongside justice.