THE RISE Arrives

              

At your bookstore now.

    In March of this year, as COVID 19 took the country into its grip, Chef Marcus Samuelsson was in Miami, Florida, cancelling the opening of an outpost of his Harlem restaurant, Red Rooster. Like many in his industry, he pivoted to providing meals to his neighbors, through José Andres' World Kitchen. 

    Meantime, police violence against African-Americans in the United States continued. Black Lives Matter crystalized concerns about structural racism, as well as overt and implicit racial bias in every aspect of American society and economy.

    In August, the media behemoth, Condé Nast responded to racism at their flagship Bon Appetite magazine. Two women of color were named to top editorial positions. Shortly later, Condé Nast hired Samuelsson as Brand Ambassador and holiday-edition guest editor of the magazine.

    This last caught my imagination. Could this be a reason to forgive Condé Nast for shuttering Gourmet? My local library had Samuelsson's books and was doing drive-by pickups. I started reading his memoir and cooking from his five earlier cookbooks. I pre-ordered The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food, and cooked from the snippets of it, as shown on Amazon.

    Finally, it's October, and yesterday, I greeted the UPS man as he delivered the book. 

    A cookbook and a manifesto, The Rise is a significant event in the culinary history of our country. Marcus Samuelsson is a Star Chef for the 21st Century. He's the Chef from Wakanda, envisaging an Afro-futurist world cuisine. By that I mean that he enlarges Black cultural creativity to include all members the African Diaspora. Re-centering Africa make it visible as the source for the many foods stuffs, flavors and traditions essential to both New World and European cuisines. 

    But what does a 74 year old white woman who has lived in California for the last 25 years know about Marcus Samuelsson's world? I was born in New York and raised in the suburbs, on a middle class Yankee diet, only slightly less reliant on fish that the Swedish fare Samuelsson learned from his adoptive grandmother. I only passed through Harlem's bustling 125th Street on the train to Manhattan's Grand Central Station.

    As I teenager, I did become familiar with the insular WASP world of Manhattan's magazine, publishing and advertising establishments. My writer father's Ivy League credentials gained him entree, but not full acceptance. He was born in the mid-west, to a Dixiecrat and the daughter of an Irish immigrant, and his refusal to conform to expected behaviours meant limited success.

    I trained as an art historian, anthropologist and linguist. Travel and exploration of the world's different cuisines became my habit. It began in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, and later Europe and Asia, both on the ground, in my cookbooks and my Gourmet subscription. West Africa, I only heard about from my younger sister who did Agricultural Extension work in Mali and Nigeria. 

    In 2009 when Condé Nast shuttered Gourmet, I began a serious study of how the magazine presented Asian food starting in 1941. I learned that while that representation reflected changes in world politics and immigration patterns, it was governed by the tastes of same insular, mostly WASP gate-keepers: magazine editors, advertising executives and corporate vice-presidents. Until Ruth Reichl arrived in 1999, the voices chosen to tell the story of Asian cuisines were seldom Asian, and not always chefs.

    Later I consulted the archives to understand the mechanisms for producing the famous Time/Life Foods of the World series. As with Gourmet, the nominal authors of these cookbooks were seldom chefs. They were chosen because of name recognition in the literary world, often expatriats in cosmopolitan New York City.

    Seen through this perspective, Marcus Samuelsson's The Rise deserves much attention, and I plan to review it in five courses: 

As a cookbook, a collection of recipes. 

For of the food itself. (Always the fun part!)

As an extension of Samuelsson's memoir Yes, Chef, and his previous five cookbooks.

    As both defiance and confirmation of the continuing prejudices of the advertising and publishing establishment. 

As a manifesto for expansion of taste, and recogntion of the work of Black Chefs.

At the suggestion of my friend and colleague, Joi Chevalier, I'll illustrate these words with mixed media collages like this one: