 |
| ISSUE NO. 681 |
| LAST WEEK WE HINTED . . . about an upcoming special guest in the newsletter, and this week we are delighted to share that Sally Ekus will be showing up in this space next week to answer your questions about writing a cookbook. Sally is the senior literary agent of the Ekus Group, a boutique culinary division of the JVNLA agency. She specializes in cookbook representation and working with first time authors. For those interested in learning more about her How to Write a Cookbook course, and staying informed about all things cookbook publishing, she has created a google form to keep the conversation going. Now that we've gotten that off our plates, it's time to dish. We had no doubt that the topic of cookbooks - using them, making them, and how both / either have evolved over time - would be rich and flavorful, but the folks who responded really knocked our oven mitts off. We heard from so many thoughtful kitchen correspondents, like Deb who said "Cookbooks are a wonderful way to pass the time even if I don’t actually make the recipe," and Laurie who shared, "I love cookbooks, especially the ones that incorporate stories of the root of the recipe." Many replies were so thoughtful and juicy that we could not possibly summarize them here...but we had to share some additional excerpts because they got to the heart of where our minds and hearts were circling around: how 'passing on' the habits of cooking are about legacies and memories - yes, of course - but also about how we interact and make meaning in our day-to-day lives. For example, Elle wrote: "That is what cooking has always been to me. Meditative, relaxing, and even transformative. When I use cookbooks, I rarely get that feeling the first time I make a recipe. I may read what it means to the person who made it, may have smiled as I imagined the memories the described, but I haven’t made a connection to it. Only when I’ve made it once as written, and feel comfortable enough to make substitutions, do I start relaxing into it. Then, I can bring my own experience into it and make it something that is truly mine." Katrina talked about how a well-used cookbook becomes "a sensory diary" of the "smells and memories a cookbook evokes." And Amanda shared what we suspect is a common sticking point for many folks: "I think one of the biggest barriers to cooking is that people who want to learn are flooded by too much information and the pressure to do everything perfectly. ...They are too afraid of doing it wrong. Also, as beneficial as pictures in cookbooks and Youtube videos are, they are still no match for practice but that seems to be something that people struggle with." As Amanda asked, is this a common problem that you experience, or that you see in younger generations? Is it more specific to those who didn't spend time in the kitchen growing up? We'd love to hear from you if this resonates. There is another aspect of the cookbook industry we would be remiss not to devote some attention to, and it's one that is not specific to this corner of publishing but is, as with so many other things, systemic. Another reader wrote in to share, anonymously, how publishing "favors people who have the money to invest in production, and up until the food industry's reckoning in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, publishing a book as a person of color or about "ethnic" food from within a culture was as difficult as getting an invite to Ina Garten's dinner table." This reader went on to say: "Sure things are changing now, but I see the shortcuts and desperation that result in books with recipes that don't work and I wish the publishing world would invest more time and money into authors and slow the process of writing a book down to allow for the creative process to unfold and simply put: to test recipes." Many of your notes got to the heart of what we have began sharing last week, and this one in particular honed in on what we have felt as the commodification of an experience that is highly qualitative, its own impact meant to be, in some ways, immeasurable. Looking more broadly at the publishing industry as a whole, in January of 2020, Lee and Low Books, a multicultural children's book publisher, put out the results of their Diversity Baseline Survey, which were stark. If you're thinking that so much has changed since four years ago, you would be right in some cases, but wrong in the practical realities of how those shifts in awareness, attention, and education have played out as far as achieving equity in compensation, access, and sustained improvements. As Issa Rae testified recently from the film and television side of things, a spark of interest or commitment can fizzle out all too easily. And Ijeoma Oluo, whose new book is out now, shared last week how, "Publishing is overwhelmingly white and one of the many ways in which it can have a very visible and harmful impact on BIPOC writers is in publicity." Her elaboration on that is not to be missed. Much like our inner drive to connect more than to simply consume, we want to consider the questions and perspectives that will advance the building of sustainable, long-term change. One of our team members pointed out how emotional the topic of cookbooks turned out to be, and we find ourselves thinking about how it is meant to be that way. In what ways can we reimagine cookbooks as cultural contributions beyond the myopic confines of capitalism? In what ways can we reimagine cookbooks that embody the power of our creative energies - and how can they empower us all? How can the process be expansive, beautiful, and bountiful rather than continually commodified and formulaic? Thank you for being in community with us, sharing your questions (you have one more week to submit them for Sally's response in next week's newsletter), and continuing to show up. Yours in food justice, Tay + Dor photo by Sophia Piña-McMahon |
tidbits...resources on anti-racism, environmentalism and food culture AKA stuff we're reading / listening to / watching / noticing / thinking about / captivated by this Tuesday . . . |
 |