Alison Kibbe, professor of African American studies, explores Black movement and belonging throughout the Americas, with particular attention to the role of food in Black life, culture and history. Books have been an indispensable part of her journey. “Once I learned to read, the world became much bigger,” she says. “Reading was not only a window into other worlds, but a portal that enabled me to understand and know myself more deeply.”
- Brother, I’m Dying – Edwidge Danticat
“A necessary story about life, family, culture and death across borders, generations and languages.”
- A Mercy – Toni Morrison
“A vital view of 17th-century American life.”
- Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route – Saidiya Hartman
“Stretched my understanding of scholarship.”
- The Warmth of Other Suns – Isabel Wilkerson
“A sweeping story that illuminates the world-changing impact of the Great Migration.”
- Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History – Sidney W. Mintz
“Blew my mind as an undergraduate and showed me what it means to take food seriously.”
- Let Us Descend – Jesmyn Ward
“Epic, poetic and a portal into the worlds of spirit, plant and ancestral knowledge.”
- Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler
“Prescient. Butler gives us a warning and a guidebook for our times.”
- The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South – Michael Twitty
“Master storytelling that remaps the South and our understanding of food.”
- In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World – Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff
“An encyclopedia that I reference regularly.”
- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants – Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Gave me hope and a framework for strengthening a reciprocal relationship with the natural world.”
