Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food Has Shaped African American Life

Wallach (How America Eats), a professor of history at the University of North Texas, expertly recounts the culinary and dining experience of African-Americans from slavery through the 21st century. Wallach notes that African-American cuisine “was a byproduct of the transatlantic slave trade that... led to a distinctive African-American identity.” She refers to such notable former slaves as writer Olaudah Equiano, who, she writes, discovered that “food was one of the key tools Europeans used to assert their authority over” slaves. (Equiano, who refused to eat on a slave ship, was force-fed so he could live long enough to be sold.) In the Jim Crow era,Wallach notes, travel guides were sold that provided restaurant and accommodation recommendations for African-Americans on the road, and, during WWII, “German prisoners of war often had access to segregated dining rooms that excluded black soldiers” throughout the U.S. She highlights modern writers such as food historian Michael Twitty and Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adiche, as well as Ethiopian-born chef Marcus Samuelsson, “the most famous American chef... who learned to cook from his Swedish grandmother.” Wallach includes a wealth of facts, and the book is meticulously detailed if academic at times. Historians will enjoy this astute take on an American culinary tradition. (June)