This achieves the high ideal of a non-fiction book: extrapolating greater and higher truths about life in general from a focus and discussion of a specific subject, or two subjects in this case. The subjects are culinary history (mainly Aftican-American) and Michael W. Twitty himself. They are intertwined intricately and the big theme is survival and art under the extreme brutal and dehumanizing capitalist society of white America, ante and post bellum. It's dense and the genetic talk sometimes can blunt something we should reckon with, and likely won't for another generation or five: this world will never advance without such considered self-reflection.

I must acknowledge this book can be ponderous and sometimes gets mired in minutiae but better this than too little.