Harris folds into her batter so many weighty ingredients that it fails to rise.
A loosey-goosey historical odyssey of African-American cuisine, from the slave trade to celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson.
Renowned cookbook author Harris (English/Queens College; The Martha’s Vineyard Table, 2007, etc.) bites off more than she can chew here. The attempt to blend culinary history with the history of Africans in America—and with some memoir, as well—requires more than the brief, superficial rehash she provides. Even her longish section on Harlem seems like a snack—especially compared to Jonathan Gill’s massive Harlem (2011)—and she offers an almost romantic view of Africans and American Indians first greeting one another as kinsmen. Of enduring interest, though, are her observations about the alterations in the American diet wrought first by the slaves and then by subsequent generations of their descendants. Because many slaves worked in food preparation—and, following emancipation, in food-service professions—the African influence, she shows, has been pervasive. She emphasizes the prominence in the earlier African-American diet of pork, greens, melon, chicken, corn and other staples. “Food,” she writes, “provided a path to independence for many blacks, especially in the port towns on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.” Harris identifies a number of prominent blacks in American culinary history, including Hercules (George Washington’s cook), Robert Bogle, Peter Augustin, Mary Ellen Pleasant, Lena Richard, Freda DeKnight and Patrick Clark, who died on fame’s cusp at 42. Even more engaging are the snippets of her own biography, a much longer version of which could have provided a far more effective vehicle to carry her culinary comments, and she does not always get the details right (she attributes to Hawthorne the opening lines of Longfellow’s “Evangeline”). Includes 15 pages of recipes, from pigs’ feet to collard greens to a recipe called “snow eggs,” which may have come from Thomas Jefferson’s cook, James Hemings, brother of Sally.
Harris folds into her batter so many weighty ingredients that it fails to rise.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59691-395-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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