JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight: one man's
journey into his own personal history and
into the roots and history of American cooking
and cuisine from Africa to today.
Jeffrey Brown is back for this visit with
the author.
It's part of our series Race Matters.
JEFFREY BROWN: For chef Michael Twitty, farm
to table has a deeper meaning than for most.
Twitty is a culinary historian who explores
the complicated story of race, culture and
food.
And he's now the first revolutionary in residence
at Colonial Williamsburg, where visitors come
to learn about and experience life in 18th
century Virginia.
Twitty takes part in the town's historic recreations,
wearing the clothing of the enslaved people
who once toiled here.
MICHAEL TWITTY, Author, "The Cooking Gene:
A Journey Through African American Culinary
History in the Old South": This is the kind
of garden that an enslaved person would have.
Imagine this is not in a big period garden
space.
Imagine that this is a space where this is
behind your cabin or beside your cabin.
JEFFREY BROWN: This is your little plot.
MICHAEL TWITTY: This is your little plot in
one place.
And it's designed to be as fertile and as
self-sustaining as possible.
If you're working in a tobacco field sun to
sun, and the only time you can cultivate this
garden is early dawn, twilight and at night.
JEFFREY BROWN: The other thing that's noticeable
here, of course, is, these aren't nice, neat
rows.
MICHAEL TWITTY: No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Our ancestors would have won every single
environmental award.
I mean, they were organic, they were local,
they were sustainable, they practiced permaculture,
they composted.
Those are all modern labels, but they were
already doing that here.
It's an issue of people who are in exile adapting,
adapting to where they are and figuring out
how to make it work.
JEFFREY BROWN: Ancestry is a central theme
in Twitty's new book, "The Cooking Gene: A
Journey Through African American Culinary
History in the Old South."
He addresses what he calls discomfort food
in the legacy of the South, in part with visits
to tobacco and cotton fields previously tended
by the enslaved.
At Williamsburg, he joined Ed Schultz in a
display field.
MICHAEL TWITTY: You know, as soon as cotton
gin comes up, the domestic slave trade comes
into play after that.
ED SCHULTZ, TV Host: Right, and that encourages
slavery elsewhere.
MICHAEL TWITTY: Right.
Right.
ED SCHULTZ: And it keeps going.
Keeps going.
Keeps going.
JEFFREY BROWN: The old South comprising slaveholding
states takes central stage in Twitty's book,
which weaves explorations of his own identity,
including his conversion to Judaism, the roots
of American food, and stories of his own childhood.
JEFFREY BROWN: The book you chose to write
is also part memoir, right?
MICHAEL TWITTY: Yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: So , why use your own story
and your own family to tell that story?
MICHAEL TWITTY: I was always intrigued by
this notion of the black autobiography.
I mean the kind of writing that Maya Angelou
or James Baldwin did, how I got over, how
I came to be this person, that we have passions
that last our whole lives, and that we are
extremely engaged in our own history and culture.
JEFFREY BROWN: But you didn't start out that
way.
MICHAEL TWITTY: No.
JEFFREY BROWN: Even by your own description,
right?
I wasn't interested in soul food.
I didn't even really like being black, I think
you wrote?
MICHAEL TWITTY: Right, exactly.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, why suddenly explore all
that?
MICHAEL TWITTY: I wanted to re-approach the
sort of narrative of self-critique and self-hatred,
but also letting people know that the food
was my way in, the stories.
Like, I got a sense of pride in the people
who I came from, my own family.
And I felt like I wanted to put the microscope
on myself.
And I wanted other people to not be afraid
to also follow the blueprint, and sort of
really own every aspect of their identity.
JEFFREY BROWN: Twitty, now 40, has delved
deeply into his background, undergoing DNA
testing and building an extensive family tree
of ancestors from many parts of the world,
including West Africa and Northern Europe.
You also got some surprises though, I think,
right, I mean, like a Confederate captain?
MICHAEL TWITTY: My great-great-great-grandfather
Richard Henry Bellamy was a captain of the
Confederate army.
And when you do genealogy as an African-American,
and you get your DNA results, you're going
to find tons of white folks that you're related
to.
We are connected, the same way that those
stories passed down from my grandmother said
we were.
JEFFREY BROWN: Many of those stories were
passed down to Twitty in the kitchens of his
childhood around Washington, D.C.
At Williamsburg, Twitty often works with fellow
chef Harold Caldwell in this 18th century
kitchen to bring history to life for visitors.
Here, as in colonial times, the cooking fire
burns even on the hottest days of summer.
So, who are you thinking of as you're cooking?
HAROLD CALDWELL, Chef: My aunties.
MICHAEL TWITTY: Right.
HAROLD CALDWELL: My great-aunties.
MICHAEL TWITTY: That's it.
Granddaddies of barbecue?
HAROLD CALDWELL: That's right.
That's right.
That's right, and all the men who were in
the kitchen.
All my uncles cooked.
But when people just label them just slaves,
they put them in a class, like they don't
have a soul, like they're not human beings.
JEFFREY BROWN: Do you know the names of anybody
that lived here?
HAROLD CALDWELL: We do.
We know there was 28 enslaved people.
We know every name of every enslaved person
that was on this property, because of the
inventory that they have.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.
HAROLD CALDWELL: Yes.
So, we speak their name as much as we -- as
often as possible.
MICHAEL TWITTY: We like to think of these
folks as the founders of American cuisine.
You know, in their hands, European, native
African, Asian food ways get combined, and
recombined.
JEFFREY BROWN: An amalgam of cultures is the
quintessential American story, but when addressing
American food, Twitty says certain people
have been left out of the narrative.
MICHAEL TWITTY: A lot of people have the argument,
well, what is American food?
And for some people, they will blurt out fast
food.
For some people, they will blurt out it's
food from all over the world.
And then, very rarely, someone will talk about
the indigenous, as well as the naturalized
foods and traditions.
And so I want people to sort of include us
in that conversation and that we have always
been a part of it.
We have always been a part of the narrative
of creating American food, and always will
be.
That's also part of the agency factor, that
you own your emotions, you own your facts,
you own your opinions, and you also understand
how we got here and how you got here.
JEFFREY BROWN: And we can have that conversation
over a meal.
MICHAEL TWITTY: And that's what I really want
to do.
I mean, I'm this weird guy.
I'm this gay, Jewish, African-American, Southern
food writer who rubs elbows with genealogists
and living historians and reenactors and museum
professionals and teachers and academics.
And I want to sit all those people at the
same table to feast on the idea that we are
different, but we are very much the same.
JEFFREY BROWN: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm
Jeffrey Brown in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's all fascinating.
Culinary historian Michael Twitty shares a
recipe, and the story behind it, on our Web
site.
You can learn how to make sorghum-brined chicken
roasted in cabbage leaves.
