Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America

By Mayukh Sen

Book Overview

Who's really behind America's appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes.

In imaginative, lively prose, Mayukh Sen--a queer, brown child of immigrants--reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration, and gender, Taste Makers will challenge the way readers look at what's on their plate--and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1324004517
• ISBN13: 9781324004516
• Release Date: November 2021
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

For those who love to hear of revolution, especially of the luminaries often lost in the shuffle.

I am so glad these women’s stories are being told. This information is fascinating and the affects they have had on the culinary world in America is crazy. While I would not say this book is a nail biter or page turner (I could put it down), it was filled with parts of history that I had no idea about. These women have had great impact on my cooking without my knowledge and paved way for everything that had come after them. Even without their culinary contributions, their academic achievements are astounding for the time periods they lived it. Everyone in this book is an inspiration.