Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks (Bookshop|Amazon) is about the foodways and folkways passed down through five generations of a Black Appalachian family. The book, by novelist and poet Crystal Wilkinson, is part memoir, part cookbook, and thoroughly delicious. This is part of a complete episode.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
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