Eating in the Club- Cookbooks and Foodie Memoirs for Your Book Club

This funny and insightful memoir follows Chin, a gay American-born Chinese kid growing up in Detroit in the ’80s. Though the city has its social issues, the Chinese restaurant his grandfather opened is a safe haven for many. All of Detroit — from drag queens to the city’s first Black mayor — are welcomed and gather around Chin’s family’s sweet-and-sour pork and scooch into their vinyl booths.

Here, James Beard award-winning author Twitty includes around 50 recipes that reflect his Black American and Jewish identities. He explores not only how to make the food from each culture, but also how the food influences the eater, and how the migratory experiences of both Jewish people and Black Americans is reflected in their cuisine.

The cocktails here each reflect the ravishing drag queens that inspired them. Make a yellow and green “Sponge Queen” cocktail inspired by Monet X Change, an “Absolutely Alien” gin/lemonade number that has Juno Birch’s blue and pink look, and more. The illustrations here are also fab.

Food is so heavily tied to language and culture, and I always love reading about how the three are intertwined in Black American history. I think any other lover of history and food will appreciate how Wilkinson does that in this part memoir, part cookbook, as she writes out the history and fortitude of Black Appalachians through recipes passed down from the women in her family.