Kirkus
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A celebration of Black Appalachian cuisine and folkways. “People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia,” writes Wilkinson, former poet laureate of Kentucky. Indeed, she adds, Appalachia is widely thought of as the domain of Scots-Irish immigrants who “were mostly poor and therefore couldn’t own slaves”—a view that’s incorrect in several dimensions. Following emancipation, some Black Appalachians took up industrial work, but most remained smallholder farmers. While no strangers to scarcity, the author’s family had access to the wild game and plants of the mountains and the abundant fruit trees and berry bushes that grew around their homes. From the rusty metal recipe box that she calls “my finest family heirloom,” Wilkinson “conjures up the kitchen ghosts of my rural homeland.” That recipe box serves as an inspiration and gentle guide, but its recipes aren’t heavy on ironclad, inviolable instructions. Writing about cooked greens, Wilkinson notes that while they so often tend to be boiled down to mushiness, she prefers some crispness to them—as do many aficionados of traditional Southern cuisine. There was even a time, she allows, when she decided that she was going to be a vegetarian and thus rejected the pork-laced greens and casseroles from her grandmother’s kitchen. “A little bit of meat ain’t gonna hurt you,” her bewildered grandmother urged. It took decades for pork to return to the author’s table, however—and now that it has, readers will want to rush to cook her husband’s recipe for pulled pork (“he’s the meat man”). Other highlights include a tasty plate of pinto beans, a perfectly delicate angel food cake, green beans with new potatoes, plus chicken and dumplings and “a mess o’ greens”—the list goes on, a font of inspiration. A pleasing, succulent mix of storytelling and mouthwatering recipes. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.