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This podcast is an avenue to dialogue about the totality of the food experience. Everything from gardening, to preparing, to eating, to hospitality, to the Lord’s Table, with an eye toward how this act that we all have to engage in helps us experience the transformative power of God’s love and what it means to be human.
Episode 17 (Michael Twitty)
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Andrew Camp: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of The Biggest Table. I am your host, Andrew Camp, and in this podcast we explore the table, food, eating, and hospitality as an arena for experiencing God's love and our love for one another. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by Michael Twitty.
Michael Twitty is a culinary, culinary historian, living history interpreter, and Judaics teacher. He is the creator of Afroculinaria, the first blog devoted to African American historic foodways and their legacy. In 2018, his book The Cooking Gene won both the James Beard Foundation Book of the Year Award and Best Writing Award. He is the first revolutionary in residence at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a TED Fellow, and was named to the forwards list of influential Jews in 2020 and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2021.
He is also the author of Kosher Soul, the Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew, which was released in 2022. So thank you for joining me today, [00:01:00] Michael. It's a privilege to be able to talk to you.
Michael Twitty: And if I, if I may, without patting myself on the back, because to some folks, pride is a sin. Kosher Soul made me the first African American, the first black man to win the National Jewish Book Award.
Andrew Camp: Oh, that's awesome. Congratulations. Thank
Michael Twitty: you. Thank you.
Andrew Camp: No, your writing has, uh, influenced me, and I've really drawn a lot from it. Um, and so you're, you write in a way in which food has, you've used food to sort of sort through your identity. And so for our readers, more than just a biography, who is Michael Twitty?
Um, with food and this understanding of African American food ways and Jewish food ways.
Michael Twitty: Well, I think that, you know, uh, one of the things that really strikes you about, um, the biblical canon as we know it in America is when the foundational texts for good or for ill is the King James Bible. [00:02:00] Um, those are, you know, a lot of people who muckrake religion and spiritual, I know why I say for ill, but for good, um, I would say as a person who is, you know, also Southern heritage, um, the King James Bible and, and I say that because not the, not the Bible that a lot of churches work with today, I'm talking about the, these and the thousand of those and the, the Bible that our grandmothers quoted.
Okay, you know, especially when you were in trouble or where there was like something going on that needed to probably be resolved. Or even like, even the cause of naming people, aka Oprah Winfrey. It was Orpah, but they said Oprah. But it's because they did that old style thing of naming somebody about, by dividing the Bible.
I mean, all these things. But um, there's this incredible verse in Exodus, In Shemot, where, you know, where, where are the leeks and the melons and the fish and the [00:03:00] garlic that we knew in the land of Egypt, you know, what is that, what is that sustenance in the narrow place in Hebrew, Mitsrayim, Egypt, the narrow, not only clinging to the Nile River for life, because it is life.
But also that place of constriction of, you know, so many opportunities that are, you know, controlled by, you know, marginalization, oppression, enslavement, and the people are like, you know, look, this man is all good and everything. Where's my leeks? Where's my, where's my melons? Where are my fish? Where's my garlic?
That's, that's, that's what we do, right? We cling to these, we have these nostalgic food memories. Even when people don't have the best childhood, the things that made them feel nourished and fed and loved, wherever, even if the [00:04:00] love came from an abusive source, Are the things that people cling to and recall and come back to, and that is a very important lesson.
One of those lessons from the scriptural tradition that we need to take heat of that it calls certain patterns in us for me, in particular, I came from, you know, I come from a tradition where I people either view us as. Us meaning African Americans, and I mean African Americans, I mean people whose ancestors were brought here on a slave ship and were exiled from West Central Africa and other places in Africa, and were not able to return.
Um, we were either seen as both being very possessed of our heritage, or being the orphans of the Western world and of Africa. And I would like to say that we are somewhere between these two extremes. [00:05:00] James Baldwin famously said, um, to be black in this country is to be American, you know, without, I'm going to misquote him, without rights in Africa, without memory.
Okay. But I would say that the memory is there for those of us who, especially those of us who grew up with more of a connection to the South, it is there. And I've spent my whole life since I was very small, listening very intently. I mean, I was lucky to, I was that generation that grew up around grandparents.
And our grandparents didn't live at the home. Our grandparents didn't live in Florida. Our grandparents lived in the house. All the grandparents died in the house. You know, that's a, that's a big difference for somebody who was detached from the, the generations, because those generations that we lived with, that we saw pass out of our own doors, they knew people who were born in slavery.
And so I always say that, [00:06:00] you know, my, for example, my father, my daddy, blessed memory, you know, he knew my great, great, great grandfather who died at 112 from Virginia. He was, he was, uh, in his. Early 20s when, um, the emancipation came and my grand, my father noticed the whip marks on his back. So I have touched hands who've touched hands and remember this man knew, you know, new people that were born in the 18th century.
Think about that. So this, so it's the food, it's the stories, it's the grandmother in the kitchen, it's my mom and my mom and dad, a blessed memory being very, um, attend attuned to the spiritual importance of, of black history, black conscious black awareness. And it's also me having a very early [00:07:00] attachment to Judaism and Jewish practice.
And I want to make it clear for everybody, Judaism is the religious civilization of the Jewish people. It is not the Jewish, um, it's not the Ecclesia. It's not the Umrah, excuse me, the Umrah, Ecclesia being the Christian church, Umrah being the Muslim sense of brotherhood and sisterhood in Islam. Um, it's a mishpocheh, it's, it's a family.
of people. Um, you are the son of the daughter of Abraham and Sarah. Um, excuse me, Abraham, our father, our mother. It's a peoplehood, and it doesn't require one to have any particular theological beliefs or understandings. However, the awareness of the mitzvot and the practice of the commandments, the mitzvot, is the most important thing.
Peoplehood is the most important I just wanted to give that definition because [00:08:00] I, you know, It's not, it's not, it's not like Baptist versus Methodist versus soft shelled Baptist versus hard shelled Baptist versus, you know, Moravian, you know, no, no, no, no, it doesn't work that way. Um, and it's also a diasporic culture of exile where there are bits and pieces and bric a brac and mosaics left all over the globe.
And so for me, putting those two pieces together has been my life's work. Not to mention telling the story of the enslaved. I often tell people, Andrew, that my entire existence. Is to be summed up in the Passover Seder, this idea of constantly revisiting the concept of leaving Egypt, leaving the narrow place, what was in the narrow place?
What do we eat in the narrow place? You know, most of my work with African American food based focus around the foods of the enslaved and enslavement and that cultural process, but also the connection to Africa and then [00:09:00] the contemporary relationship between Africa and her diaspora and food. As well as, of course, how African Americans use, how we use food to express our identity and how those two diasporas have relationship through, um, um, culinary creation.
Andrew Camp: Yeah. Wow. Um, a lot to unpack there. Um, but yeah, I want to touch on. You know, because you said, you know, your, your journey can be summed up with the Passover Seder plate. So can you explain that a little more? Because I think, um, in, in the cooking gene, you draw that correlation out beautifully of the importance of, for African American slaves, that Passover being a seminal story.
Um, and, and so yeah, what is it about the Passover Seder that leads you out of the narrow place and into this wider expanse?
Michael Twitty: So [00:10:00] the word Seder in Hebrew means order, and it's a very complex thing because in the Torah, The, um, what, you know, the commandment is to tell the story, eat the sacrifice of the lamb, um, those parts that have been given back to the common, the commoners, and eat it with unleavened bread and tell your child on that day, the story of how you loved each.
It doesn't say anything about, yeah, there's nothing about, you know, you know, beating each other up with leaks, which is very Iranian. We've got Afghani. It doesn't say anything about any of the customs that have come down to the centuries. Or even the basic things like the four questions. Um, and to some people, that's, I will say this up front, people from the outside looking into the Jewish world, [00:11:00] um, particularly in those cultures and traditions which are supersessionist, find any sort of, sort of, find any sort of, like, layering to be Not cool.
Like, if it didn't happen in the original book, um, it's not cool, but the reality is, that's what, we're very realistic, that's what history does. You go different places, you do different things, it layers. And those layers, right, are there for the children, for the elders, for the parents, for people who are strangers.
It's all there. And the job is, is, is, is to teach you the story through means acquired through the Greco Roman period from the Egyptian times. Um, you know, right down to our own modern era, you know, with the orange and the cedar plate. Um, and I just found this to be, it was one of, you know, Passover was my favorite holiday.
And it's also, to me, like, the archetypal Jewish [00:12:00] tradition, because it does layer history, it does have, it starts off with a scriptural, um, a textual, uh, center, and spirals out through experience, time, and it also uses food as a symbol. Those foods are, are, you know, actually, Real, really the appetizers.
There's no way to get around it. They actually did start off as appetizers to this meal, especially in the Greco Roman period. Um, and then they acquired the level of symbolism. Um, and you, you know, people have added more symbols. For example, um, so we have, originally we have the egg, the bitter herb, Which can also be or not be, um, um, 1 or 2 things we can talk about that in a 2nd, but the sweet, um, [00:13:00] that's used to symbolize the pyramids or the pyramids, but the bricks that, um, pharaohs of storehouses were created out of, um, the shank bone for the lamb, um, the month size on the, on the, on the table.
You know, like lots of these little symbols that, that call to mind this narrative, the story, the spring vegetable, et cetera. Well, what's your spring vegetable? Depends on what part of the world you're from, we have access to. In Eastern Europe it was mostly a potato, in America it's mostly parsley. That's a story in of itself.
That's, that's another. Oh, wait a minute. What about that narrative? Or if you're a vegan, you use a beet instead of a bone or horseradish. It can be horseradish. It can be hot red pepper. It can be, um, it could be romaine lettuce. Rosa can be apples and nuts and wine. It could be dates. It can be date molasses.
It [00:14:00] could be, um, you know, balls mushed up with raisins and other things, whatever, whatever your tradition says, even that as a story. And then, of course, the bigger spiritual spiritual narrative, um, which is there, it's all there to make the kids ask questions. So here you have the food, questions, the constant, the need to ask more and more questions beyond just the four questions that the youngest child is given.
Um, I think people need to realize in Jewish tradition, um, we're always asking our young people to stand up and speak. Whereas, you know, I do come from like the most watered down Southern fundamentalist tradition where children do not speak at all unless they are spoken to, unless they have to read a poem in church or something like that, you know, very different reality.
Right. Um, but I guess I'm saying all this to say that those influences, those [00:15:00] parts of the narrative really had a deep impact on me. Storytelling. Um, food eating, and we're not even talking about the main meal, which is like the biggest, the biggest home meal in the Jewish household, um, even above Rosh Hashanah is your creativity, because we can't use certain ingredients made from wheat and gluten, et cetera.
Uh, it's the, it's the, it's the most creative and most traditional and most like, if it doesn't taste like it's always tasted, we're going to have a problem. And, you know, those of us who are listening who are black understand what I mean, because, you know, if you don't make that potato salad a certain way, or do that chicken a certain way, there's going to be issues, there will never be no peace at the holiday table, the family reunion, the funeral, whatever, the wedding, whatever's going on, unless it's made a certain way.
And, you know, even, even as you hear me talk about this. There's that weaving, and I think that [00:16:00] people have this attitude of I thought you were this, I thought this was this, and the reality is, no, we have always been weavers, we've always been braiders, we've always been people who have, you know, come up with traditions that reflect distant blood memory, things that we have forgotten but somehow speak to us, and things that are, that are written down, that are written down.
In text that just simply won't go away and leave us alone. And that's why Pesach Passover is like, for me, um, big, but one more part. The whole theme of Pesach is liberation as a people, but also, you know, I've heard people use the Pesach Seder to kind of like go along with, um, leaving substance abuse and many other.
And of course, you know, we talk about my Seder every year when I host, we talk [00:17:00] about modern plagues. You know, there is still enslavement in the world. The fact that there are, there are many things that we have to work through as a human race, otherwise, which we will not be. And so there's that, and that's, this is the constant notion of what does it mean to be enslaved?
What does liberation actually mean? What is resistance? And if you, you know, everything I do pretty much falls into all of that.
Andrew Camp: Righto. Yeah. Because in re, you know, because part of the beauty of the Passover, and if I'm misquoting this, correct me, please, um, is that, you know, through the layering, through that, you're reentering and retelling a story that you still live as a people.
Um, and so, you know, it sort of pulls you back in as, you know, these layers expand Passover. Um, you're still pulled back into the center of what it means to be a Christian. A person, because it's not just a story once long lived, [00:18:00] but it's the story. You still live as, um, as a people. Am I correct?
Michael Twitty: Yes. Yes. And then every single day and every single, every single day you were asked to in prayer to say the words.
Um, in remembrance of the leaving the access from Egypt, leaving from Egypt tonight in Shabbat, the, you know, in memory of the access from Egypt. It's as a part of everyday life and every single Shabbat and and most holidays in the Kiddush is the Some part of the world's the exodus from Egypt So in a sense of, so for me, that's important, but also, I guess in my soul and my whole life, having been so connected to my own ancestors, I'm also looking at every single day when I wake up of not just what they, I need to finish my team at him.
Which is the translation refutation is, [00:19:00] Hey, thank you, God, for giving my, giving me back the life for us. It's also, Hey, gee, aren't I lucky to. Not live in 1860 in at any time before that the 200 plus years that my own bloodline was this country enslaved But also the time after that when they weren't officially enslaved, but they were still enslaved Right and that I still have work to do.
So I really do have this dual notion of Liberation on both sides every single day. I wake up and a gratitude but also this idea that I have work to do Hmm.
Andrew Camp: If you could summarize that work, what is that work?
Michael Twitty: Teaching. Cooking. I mean, you know, one of the people who, um, had a deep influence on me, um, the late professor John Michael Vlach, he was a folklorist and historian, [00:20:00] um, of material culture who was at GW University.
I did not go there, but I knew this man. And he was also a lead figure in my field. And I got to know him personally. And he said to me one time over a meal, he said, you know, um, you can't do everything you may want to do everything, but you won't do everything. Well, however, if you pick three things and do them better than most people do, and then you take one of those three things and do it better than anybody else ever will, you might just come up with something.
And so, instead of being, he said it in a very gentle, loving way, and it wasn't because he was critiquing me, he was just trying to get me to focus. Right. And at that point in time, I realized food was not, you know, they were cookbook writers. Surely, but there wasn't the same culture around [00:21:00] telling the story of African American food and also the diversity of African American food, you know, part of when writing kosher soul, one of my favorite chapters is actually the chapter where I interview, um, um, chef Chamber, who is a Muslim chef from the community in Philadelphia, which is very big.
People don't realize it's a whole orthodox Sunni Muslim community in Philadelphia, very, very, um, um. Large, very powerful, and also, um, very traditional, very observant, and as I'm interviewing her about her tradition, I'm realizing, wow, how much do I really know about black Muslim foodways, or Sunni Muslim foodways in the African American community beyond just the basics, or how much do I know about how food works.
In a Latino or a Blasian household, you know, or, you know, a black Catholic household or, um, [00:22:00] how does black vegan tradition, you know, job with revolutionary traditions and liberation and resistance, you know, all that, all these, you know, I know these are very academic and very heady, but it's also about the diversity of black food and culture beyond just, you know, The meat and three people think conceive of, or a soul food meal, um, or the fact that this takes different forms.
Are you Afro Latian? Are you Creole? Are you black from the north and had never been anywhere else? Are you black from Florida and incorporate Afro Cuban or other food, Puerto Rican food base into what you do? Are you black in California? Black folks, I just learned this from six months living there. Black folks in California have a whole different way of eating.
Understanding food and and of course for all of us not well, no, that's true. No, no, no. I don't care if you're humanist. I don't care if you're secular for all of us. [00:23:00] There is a sacred sacredness about food. It's a very important part of the African tradition, no matter where you come from, what you are right.
You see food as a form of a sacrament, for lack of a better term. Um, and that sacredness is not just among the living. It's between the living and the dead. It's between the living and those who are going to be born. Right. And I got to tell you something. I, at one point in my life, not very long ago, I thought this is being very sort of metaphorical and very sort of like a nice thought.
Until I started reading about the connection between food and the dead. Pregnancy and food and women in gestation, and then learning that the, you know, the mother carries the daughter and they both have all of the, the eggs that [00:24:00] will have, they'll ever have. And that, that, that just is, it's, it's, it's, it's this incredible thing that God has created in us that.
That we, we carry the seed, literally the seeds, the next generation, and they were affected by the food, the trauma, the experiences of all the mothers we've ever had going back to the beginning of hover. When I learned that I was like, wow, this really isn't. As metaphorical as I thought it was. It was, it's, it's our deeply poetic way of explaining things.
It's quite biological.
Andrew Camp: Yeah, and what you're saying is that food and life is connected in more ways than we can ever imagine, and that food tells a story that is both rich and glorious and joyful, but also deeply painful and deeply sorrowful, um, and filled with the whip marks of your great great great grandfather.
Um, you know, even dating back to our [00:25:00] ancestors, your ancestors from Egypt and, um, and that food, you know, you write.
Michael Twitty: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Andrew Camp: No, because you were going to talk, you talked in Kosher Soul that in food, we are more authentic than we know, more self revelatory than we let on. You know, and so food expresses more than just who I am as Andrew Camp when I cook, and food expresses more than just who Michael Twitty is as an individual person, but it expresses a story that, that is as rich and deep and painful as Mm
Michael Twitty: hmm.
We are, we, you know, people, when I first started out writing about this and on social media, people were just like, Oh my God, please spare me the politics. And I had to reinvestigate what they meant by that word politics. What they really meant was please don't disturb me with things that I have no [00:26:00] comprehension of and have no capacity to understand.
I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, you know, I'm being nice, but I'm being blunt. They just, you know, it's just like, it's just like, um, it's, it's inconsiderate and cruel to like, just like not really understand it. Sometimes the storyline isn't that nice and that people haven't, you know, God, you know, God bless the hands of the cook was always the expression growing up, right, this idea that, you know, mom and grandma and sometimes granddaddy went through stuff.
It was a, it was a, it was a kind of a plain, neutral way of acknowledging that this didn't just happen out of nowhere, that God had to create the person, the person had to, somebody had to cultivate or collect the food, and then somebody had to transform that food into something delicious. And all at each stage in the game, it was not an easy process.[00:27:00]
And we talk about history. People need to understand something, you know, these things take their toll. These, you know, one of the most incredible things about matzah versus bread is this. Matzah was the bread that we made immediately. And the bread, the sourdough that the Egyptians ate, that the Egyptians of a certain class ate every day wore their teeth down because of the sand.
Hmm. But our, you know, we were, we were cool because, you know, we made ours on the spot. We didn't have time to put sand in it, you know, have sand get in it. And it's just like little things like that, but also the traumas of, you know, people talk, people talk about the traumas of enslavement and food in America.
You know, it's this idea that, unfortunately people have this idea, Andrew, that black food starts when, when white people throw their scraps out to them and somehow they make them to do this. That's nonsense. That does not honor the agency or [00:28:00] ownership of black people or their connection to, or our connection to Africa and ideas about food.
You go to Brazil, you get Feijoada, right? Feijoada. And some people are like, Oh, that doesn't come. It does come from the African tradition. Mixing with the Portuguese and indigenous tradition and Feijoada is beans and rice with hot sauce. Collard greens, barbecue, farofa, which is basically, you know, like grits.
And, um, you know, all the other, you know, trimmings. And if you said to somebody from North America, from Memphis, Tennessee, what if I gave you some, some beans and rice, some barbecues, some grits, some hot sauce, some collard greens? Who does that sound like? It sounds like me. Right. Those are our cousins in Brazil.
You know, one of the most spiritual things I ever experienced. In terms of my own journey was [00:29:00] the cooking gene relating all these things to, um, genetics and connections. And there was this realization. It wasn't just finding out, you know, my ancestors in the continent. It was a realization when I started finding people who were cousins across the Americas.
Then it really hit me. It wasn't just one family, one line went to America. No, no, no. It was families that were split up on the coast of West Africa that went to different places in the Americas. And then not only that, but now learning about the food ways of Martinique or Brazil or Jamaica or Haiti or Mexico, then turns into this process of going, wow, we went different places, created different languages in very similar ways.
We created very similar kind of food ways, not exactly the same, but very similar. There was some, there's something going on behind all of us. I think a bit more powerful than us. It helped us preserve. A large [00:30:00] part of our identity and sensibility, despite the ruptures exile and being separated from each other.
So you can't. Get to the good stuff without going through some of the bad stuff. And I think a lot of people need to be reminded of that. It's not easy. It's it's it's and by the way, it's not a black or a nonwhite thing. I remind people about this through my presentations talking about the potato famine, you know, which is one of not just the only but one of.
Um, these complicated major events in our history, people don't realize the British, uh, when they colonized, um, Ireland, refused to let them take full advantage of the resources of the island. And a lot of Irish were laborers and, uh, sharecropping farmers on their own land. [00:31:00] And they came to a point where they could only eat this one thing, the lump of potato.
Well, I'll give you a little fun thing. Fun thing. Fun thing. In Northern Ireland, they also ate potatoes too, but they had a potato called the yam potato. Does that sound interesting? The yam potato. The yam wasn't a sweet potato, but it was a potato that had that African name, yam, which means to eat. Um, the, the, the thing you eat, kind of like, it's like saying that, but they took it to mean the actual name for a crop or vegetable.
Well, the British took the yam potato from South Carolina, from the gardens of their enslaved people, and took them to the plantations of Northern Ireland to feed Irish, um, farm workers. Right? And so, let's go the other route. Beet sugar. Most Americans whose [00:32:00] ancestors came through Ellis Island were beet sugar eaters.
Why? Because, what was the main source of sugar before the 1820s? It was sugarcane. Where'd it come from? The plantations of the Americas. What started happening? Revolution. First with Haiti, right? And Napoleon was, was, was big behind the production of beet sugar, because now he's lost the jewel of his crown.
And then after that, he had to sell Louisiana, another source of sugar and rice and indigo, et cetera, all these subtropical crops. So Andrew, I guess what I'm saying is for people to an age where some people are turning the American narrative in particular, which is what we know we come from into sort of like this extra biblical spiritual story, right?
They're continually forgetting the [00:33:00] parts that don't exactly buffer their theology and, quite frankly, um, remind us that Black history is American history and, and vice versa.
Andrew Camp: For sure. Yeah. You know, and we're coming up on the holiday of Juneteenth, which, You know, thankfully has now officially been recognized federal holiday and food is becoming a story intertwined with Juneteenth and so as People think about Juneteenth and are here about food and they'll hear about red punch or watermelon, you know And they'll hear about the easy stories What story do you want people to recognize or begin to listen to when they think about Juneteenth?
Michael Twitty: The first thing is that there were multiple emancipations and they were all difficult Hmm Imagine like you've been working on this place and maybe some of your ancestors and [00:34:00] all of a sudden one day you're told okay you're free, which is great, but also told get off my land. You have no home here. But you've built this person's wealth up, this is the only home you've ever known.
Or maybe you can stay, but I'm gonna cheat you for the next two generations. Or I want to get off this land. I want to go, you know, go learn how to read and somebody burns down your school. I mean, it's just, yeah, every day I learn about some new atrocity that I, that even me, even me, who is like steeped in black history, didn't even know about real ones.
Not fake ones. They make up sometimes, but real ones. Um, and it's just like, okay, how do I even begin to deal with this? Right. But then the other part of it is this. Yeah. In Texas, the reason why it was it wasn't just, Hey, we can we can fake them out. It was [00:35:00] because, um, you know, the major crops, uh, cotton and sugar.
predominantly cotton. Texas was a lot warmer than say, for example, in North Carolina or Tennessee. So, whereas in the Upper South, you would be planting those crops, well, those crops would be very juvenile at the, at, in June 1865. They would have been quite well underway. It would have been chopping time.
Chopping time means that you were thinning the crop so that you could ever, you know, Successful harvest. So in other words, cotton picking would have begun in July and August at the earliest, I want to continue through the rest of the fall. So in other words, the planners in Texas were [00:36:00] like, if we don't, we don't really let on, we can get one more really good crop out of these people before we have to like, before the, and the jig is up.
And people don't understand that about Juneteenth. It's a very Texas holiday, even though it represents all these emancipations put together. D. C. had one, uh, Maryland and Kentucky had one, um, the Upper South had them, and then the Lower South had them, and then of course Texas. There are five or six emancipations.
And Emancipation Day used to be an actual holiday, um, for most black families in some form in the two, three generations after slavery. It was a church holiday. It was a home holiday. It really did mean something. Um, but I guess one of the things I, you know, I see some pushback against Juneteenth and I'm just like, um, We really need to unpack why people have [00:37:00] that pushback.
And I didn't like to think this or feel this until I started to literally get into some of the, um, expose work post, you know, during and post George Floyd. And I really hated to hear that there were people living in 2000. 20 plus something who weren't mad about the, it wasn't their anger about the civil war or some nonsense.
It was their anger. And I still can't, it's just hurts to say that it was their anger that they had been robbed of the generational wealth promised to them by the exploitation of black, black bodies. People literally saying, you took my landing, took my money. You know what that money was? The people. That it's that's stunning and it's it's hard.
It rarely enters our public discourse. This isn't about statues. This is not about, you know, idol [00:38:00] worship honoring these heroes at that what they think they stood for. This is about you took my ability to be a millionaire in perpetuity. I do not care if your grandmother was violated. I do not care if your grandfather was worked to death.
I do not care if your children were sold away from their parents. I do not care if you were stripped of deep parts of your culture. I do not care if you were given a god that didn't look like you. And told that she weren't beautiful enough and smart enough. I don't give a damn because it was my God given right to suppress you until I got every drop of blood out of your body.
And when you hear people vocalize that in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and beyond. You just go, it's stunning, Andrew, it takes the breath and the life out of you to know that it isn't just about your phenotype or about what [00:39:00] happened in a war 150 years ago, it's actually about that greedy, um, avarice that says, you know, your, your freedom, your, I don't care about your freedom, your body, uh, there was a, there was a guy who right before 2020 was a woman who was Living in a space and she was Karen by a guy, a gentleman, a gentleman, a man who lived in her building, who was a doctor, who should have known, but it was educated and he confronted her in the elevator and he cursed her out.
And he said the words, I don't care. I don't care if I hurt your feelings. I don't care if I'm taking your, your ability to live as a free citizen away. It's about me and I'll care about you. And you, you can take that somewhere else. You are nothing to me. So I use food stories, [00:40:00] knowledge to, to bring people to, to try to bring people together, give people some knowledge and awareness to, you know, people will ask me questions during my demos or talks.
Like, why do you say enslaved? Because what is the condition? That's why it's like saying someone is living with autism versus being autistic. Um, I talk about how, you know, we share certain things food wise as Southerners or as Americans or as Latin America or people of the Americas. And what that means, and I encourage people to sort of see the, see the bridge with themselves between their reality and somebody else's reality.
Um, most people don't do that. Most people just leave it at the food or, you know, can we just all get along? No, we can't get along until we understand we can actually live in peace. Right. You know, that breaking bread thing that we have, [00:41:00] which comes directly out of, you know, Hebrew tradition, you gotta, at some point, you have to, you know, Bring that to life.
At some point you have to have people do more than just, you know, give lip service to conversations about social justice, about peace. About, you know, living the Beatitudes, you have to bring into existence by nourishing people, sharing food, feeding the hungry, um, having people grow their grow back their food tradition.
That's not the big part of my work, right? Is giving the heirloom seeds and feeding ourselves and telling the stories again. And again, share, again, sharing. I mean, it's a whole cycle in a loop. That was more than two minutes, but I, but I hope that was good.
Andrew Camp: [00:42:00] It was, and I, as you're talking, it's Like I was dwelling up and tearing up just because of the, the pain and the anger, the frustration I could hear in you and just the hard work that is ever before us.
And, um, yeah, like it's, it's uncomfortable, but to be able to sit in the discomfort but not give up hope. Because you also write that hope is a critical ingredient in this Yes. This journey of yours. And so we have to hold in. Yeah, we have to hold intention, so how do we hold intention hope, but without a naive white hope that is not true hope, um, but a hope that lives in discomfort?
Michael Twitty: You know something, um, I called my initial foray into the Deep South, my Southern Discomfort Tour. [00:43:00] Play on Southern Comfort, of course, right? Right. And this idea that Southern Hospitality and Southern Graciousness and The pleasure of the table was somehow detached from the living who held that table up.
This is, you know, I talk about how that table was held up by everybody in the society, but especially by our ancestors. Who are the catalyst people who brought things and ideas and foods together. And, um, for me, the genealogy part was also understanding the multiplicity of peoples within my own bloodline.
Um, I find it really disturbing that [00:44:00] people want to use our mixedness against us to push back on any sense of purity, which, you know, I'm not for myself. But also try to say, nah, you can't be everything. I always would hear that. I'm like, I can't, I mean, I didn't ask for that 2%, um, Italian ancestry. I didn't ask for this, that, and the, but now that I have it, I'm going to have that conversation with myself about, well, somebody running around in ancient Rome, wasn't, you know, wasn't taking anybody out of Africa to North America.
So what does that mean? When you grow up, if you grow up black in a Western society, listen, And you, you, you feel like none of that stuff they teach you has anything to do with you. But when you are black and American and You understand that you were the product of genetic admixture. I'd rather have that than have [00:45:00] nothing at all.
Especially when it comes to the food and the history. I mean, I remember going through the exhibit about the Vikings in Denmark, and it was the most eerie feeling I've ever had in my entire life. Because a significant portion of my genetic admixture is the result of the Vikings coming into England and Ireland.
And I knew this from time I was very young, by the way. And, uh, I'll tell you the story. You get, people can be like, what do you, what do you mean by that? Um, when I was in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Philippan, surprised I can remember her name, would always play a different, um, composer every morning. And one morning she played Edvard Grieg, who was Norwegian.
And I immediately said to Mrs. Philippan, hand raised in my multicultural classroom in Montgomery County, Maryland, Mrs. Philippan, I know about that. Uh, my [00:46:00] family is from Norway.
Come to find out multiple DNA tests later. Yep. You're right. Scandinavian Viking ancestry again and again and again across different platforms. And as I'm walking through this exhibit, this very dark, cold looking exhibit in Denmark about the Vikings was a huge exhibit, traveling exhibit. This feeling of in one of these little boxes is something that was touched by or made by somebody who is living in your veins right now.
It was a very eerie, poignant feeling and the liberation looks like confronting those narratives and talking about them, the Danes and fellow Norse people who I met with in Denmark. [00:47:00] We're fascinated. The Irish I've met with in Ireland were, you know, it's fascinating, but, but, but not surprised. But you ask the average American about the, Oh, like, really?
Have you seen the diversity of our way? Are we a color of faces or come on now? Do you really think the iced tea walked out of Africa like that? Let's be real. Yeah. There are so many other African American celebrities you can think of, um, that don't exactly look like, you know, they are purely from one part of Africa to the next.
And you know, there's that familyhood or when you, when you do realize that you and somebody else have this genetic connection, white, black, whatever, what do you do with that? Well, my thing is, you know, I love the fact that more and more liberal and progressive Southerners will say things like, we're probably related as opposed to the past, [00:48:00] which was nope, nope, nope, nope, didn't happen, but we're probably related, we're cousins and we have to kind of live with that.
And what do you do when you have family, you feed them, you know, and understand that the, the family history is in the food history. They go hand in hand and it's a, it's for me, it's a tool of just like breaking down those traumas and making them more manageable, but also creating for the future and opportunity, a legacy of having a better, more nuanced approach.
conversation about who we are, what we eat, and why we're here.
Yeah.
Andrew Camp: No, for sure. And that's, as I've explored with various guests in this podcast, the discomfort and being in discomfort is a theme that just always keeps coming up, which is for me, really helpful because being [00:49:00] white middle class and having joyous times around the table, And the table always being the secure base of which my life has evolved, like, I don't associate discomfort with the table, um, you know, and so this podcast has been an avenue for me to explore that of various voices, including yours of like, what does it mean to be okay with the discomfort and the stories that need to be told?
Michael Twitty: One of my, one of my, um, friends and colleagues once said to me, you know, we should just really, we should have a, a black American Seder. Um, and of course, some of the people who are listening to this may know that I have my own African American Seder plate, and there are other Seder plates that have become innovated to go along with traditional Seder plates to tell multiple stories.
But this is different. He said we should have a meal where once a year, we just eat all the horrible [00:50:00] things, the pigtails, the chitlins, the whatever. We wash it down. His joke, not mine, but I co signed. Four cups of Kool Aid to make it, just wash it down. And he, cause he really did not like collard greens. He really did not like a lot of soul food.
He certainly did not like the innards, rooted to the Tudor version of soul food. And when you said something about discomfort, all I could think about was His example of just like, let's just get it out of the way once a year, eat all the horrible things, and just live with it. And I mean, the idea that he felt that we had to experience the discomfort, you know, one things I joke about in terms of.
Black Jewish stuff is that we're the only two people where you're Encouraged, forced to eat nasty, to eat nasty things and I Make the analogy of my mom. My mom would go, you know, Michael [00:51:00] eat this. Why? It's nasty Why do you want me to eat something if it's nasty? Jewish speak Eat it. It's terrible. Why do I want to eat if it's terrible?
Because it's terrible. And then I thought to myself one day, this has, there has to be some kind of wisdom behind the joke. And the wisdom goes like this. How in a life fraught with oppression, marginalization, anti semitism, anti blackness, How do I know the good from the bad? How do I know the holy from the profane?
I have to know when things taste bad, so I'll know that when life is delicious.
And then when I thought about that, it made total sense. And then I thought about the kid going in the Jewish household. Why do we have to eat gefilte fish? Because back in Europe, when the czar was chasing us and then what is it? What is the [00:52:00] black Southern kid here? Why are we going to eat these nasty chitlins?
Cause back in the plantation, we had nothing to eat. It's the same sort of just like, those are, those are narratives and stories and you don't have to be black or you can be Russian. You could be Greek, you could be Polish. And not, and, and just as long as you're not a white Anglo Saxon Protestant, and you will hear these, these narratives of want and famine and war and Soviet times.
I mean, I grew up with that in, in, in, outside of DC. You know, Internet, um, most of the kids who came from Central America were fleeing the wars there in the 80s that our government unfortunately had a lot to do with, or there were people who I grew up with who fled when the Shah left Iran. So, for me, I've never really known, or Southeast Asia, oh, my God, all these conflicts went hand in hand with what people [00:53:00] ate, how they lived, how they expressed their culture, how they survived.
So, I just want everybody to understand, I'm not just that happened a long time ago to black folks. Or some time ago. I'm talking about the consistent reality I grew up with, which was this is our joy that sits along with our discomfort. And resolving that is what makes us who we are.
Andrew Camp: That's such a good word.
Um, yeah, we can't taste the good until we know what, what the pain tastes like too. Which
Michael Twitty: goes back to the Seder, Andrew.
Andrew Camp: Yeah. It does.
Michael Twitty: Haroset, with the bitter herb, eating together.
Andrew Camp: Yeah. Or dipping the herb in the salt water, too, right? To remember the tears.
Michael Twitty: Mm hmm. Correct.
Andrew Camp: You know? Or recounting the plagues, emptying the cup to recount the plagues, you know?
Um, [00:54:00] there's always pain and sorrow mixed with joy, but But what I love about the Passover and again, you know, correct me, please, is that it always ends with hope, like next year, next year in Jerusalem or next year, you know, um, and so we hold that hope despite the pain.
Michael Twitty: That's right. Lashana haba b'Yerushalayim, exactly.
The hope of redemption, return, um, renaissance, all of it.
Andrew Camp: Um, wow, there's so much more I would love to talk about, but, um, out of respect for time and, um, everything, uh, there's some fun questions I'd love to wrap up a podcast with. Um, you know, just since we were talking about food, um, so what's one food you refuse to eat?
Michael Twitty: Hmm. Chitlins.
Andrew Camp: Jetlines. [00:55:00]
Michael Twitty: The small intestine of the hog, well, one part of it is not kosher. Other part of it is, even if they, even if it was my thing, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. That, I mean, this is one of those things that my father, of blessed memory, relished, and my uncle, and my grandfather, and they were just so disgusting.
And so, the look of them, and the smell of them, the fact that they made the house smell like the elephant house at the zoo, oh my god. Oh wow. I just can't. I can't, I can't, I can't. I can't.
Andrew Camp: Okay, fair enough. Then on the other end of the spectrum, what's one of the best things you've ever eaten?
Michael Twitty: Oh my god. Um, white chocolate bread pudding in Louisiana.
Outstanding. Have never made it in house, because why should I even try? Just so good, so good. Um, I, I love scallion pancakes.
Andrew Camp: Okay. Like the Asian scallion? I just
Michael Twitty: have a Yes, I have an [00:56:00] affection for them, and, you know, I love, um, true to my, true to my culture, good barbecue and fried chicken, and I love greens.
I love collard greens, but my greens, they're not vinegary. I only, I, I spike them with a little bit of lime juice sometimes, and, you know, hey, I, I love fresh fruit, you know, especially for, you know, I'm looking outside a couple, a couple days from now, we'll have A few blueberries, a lot of blackberries and raspberries and strawberries.
And I'm like, so excited about it. I bet. So peaches, especially. Oh, yes.
Andrew Camp: And finally, you know, I think you maybe touched on it, but there's a conversation among chefs about last meals, as in if you knew you only had one last meal to enjoy. Um, what would that meal include for Michael?
Michael Twitty: Well, I, I, I hate that question [00:57:00] because I'm like, it's a kind of horror for me.
It's a, it's an evil eye. So, you know, I will say this, the King David, um, had what they call the Mull of, um, a Mull of Amalka, which was escorting the queen because it was foretold that he would pass away, um, on, um, Monday, Shabbos, he would pass away. And Shabbat was becoming the weekday. And so every single Shabbat he had that passed as the weekday where he wasn't dead, he would host a feast.
And we still do that, it's called the Melevimalka. So I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say, uh, if I had one day left, I mean, that doesn't compete with me. Okay. Um, I, I, because, you know, a good practitioner of an Abrahamic faith isn't worried about food. He's worried about his Neshama, his soul. Um, but I would say this, let's say I'm 103 and I'm still here.[00:58:00]
And they're like, what do you want to eat? Anything I did will please a mantra and three praise God. And then that now, then we got some caramel cake coming. We got, we got some, um, I would some good stir fried veggie with ginger and garlic. We have the scallion pancakes. We got the barbecue. We got the glove.
We have, um, Um, food from all over the world, all of the Jollof rice. We got red rice. We got all the, we got all the pieces. You know, we have brisket. I mean, that's my answer. My answer is not the next day. You know,
Andrew Camp: no
Michael Twitty: answer is they, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm 203 and I'm still here, then we, we, we, we, we really gonna have a good time now.
I might not be here after eating that meal
Andrew Camp: for sure,
Michael Twitty: but, but at least I can say Baruch Hashem [00:59:00] praise God that, you know, I made it to do that. And I hope to live a long life and whatever God deems is appropriate for me. Because I have a lot of things to teach. I have a lot of things to tell. And, um, being a master cook is, um, is about having the time and the space to tell as many stories through food as you can.
And then having the grace to let those things go so the next generation can do its own work.
Andrew Camp: Well, Michael, this has been a true joy and a privilege. Um, you are, yeah. Listeners, if you're not familiar with Michael's work, please. Familiarize yourself with his work, The Cooking Gene, Kosher Soda Books. Um, where else can they find you, Michael? Um, if they want to follow someone.
Michael Twitty: Instagram. Yeah, The Cooking Gene on Instagram.
Um, you know, I'm, I'm. Kosher Soul on X, [01:00:00] whatever's happened with that. It's, it's, it's a bizarre place to be these days when I'm on there, but definitely Instagram is a big place for me where I'm still like highly active. Um, and they can, and please do support the books. Please buy them wholesale. I love you.
If you can't afford certain things, I get it. I get it. But if you can, please buy them wholesale because that makes a difference because then the publisher knows. These books matter. Not just awards, but sales. These books matter. These stories get to be told, and somebody who comes behind me or alongside me can tell their story.
Andrew Camp: For sure.
Michael Twitty: You know, so we can all, we can all be a part of this, uh, sharing of knowledge and truth.
Andrew Camp: Absolutely. Um, and if you've enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing it with others. Thanks for joining us on this episode of The Biggest Table, where we explore what it means to be transformed by God's love around the table and through food.
Until we're gathered around the next table, [01:01:00] goodbye.