For more information, feel free to contact Michael Twitty by clicking here.

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Goals

The goal of my work is to strive for authenticity and rigor in the interpretation of African American culinary history. Specifically, my goals are to:

• Research and study receipt books, newspaper advertisements, cookbooks, interviews, diaries, letters, images and original artifacts of the period, as well as by collecting oral histories from elders who remember the foods and foodways of generations past.

• Share research with my peers and the public through books, articles, lectures, cooking demonstrations, historic dinners and cook-ins where we prepare food as a community.

• Participate in living history programs, in various capacities, as an interpreter, interpretive consultant, and educator.

• Demonstrate and learn by doing activities related to historic foodways, not limited to, but including, open hearth and open-air cooking, heirloom and culturally-specific gardening, wild-crafting, historic food preservation.

• Develop networks that bridge the culinary heritage of African America with the African continent and her Diaspora. We need to actively link the culinary traditions of the Southern United States with West and Central Africa, Brazil, the West Indies, and Latin America.

• Illustrate the impact that African and African American cooks and their dishes have had on the history of both American and world cuisine.

• Carry on the legacy by creating meaningful and innovative new dishes and recipes that draw on the best of the African culinary tradition, and other influences from my personal food-scape; as well as encouraging others to do so.

• Raise awareness and contribute to the development of community efforts to get young people engaged in positive work centered in food. Knowledge of our past is just the first goal; it’s also about knowing contemporary food trends, foods from family traditions, other parts of the African Diaspora, opportunities in foods, organic agriculture, herbalism, and living history. Books preserve the traditions of the past and present, but the next generation keeps the tradition going.

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