The Transformative Power of Food

Vox's Jamil Smith talks with Caroline Randall Williams, academic, poet, and co-author (with her mother, Alice Randall) of Soul Food Love. They discuss the ways in which the African American culinary tradition is interpreted, how to tell stories through cooking, and why what we cook and eat is inextricably bound up with who we are.

Host: Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith), Senior Correspondent, Vox

Guest: Caroline Randall Williams (@caroranwill), author; writer-in-residence of Medicine, Health, and Society, Vanderbilt University

References: 

• "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument" by Caroline Randall Williams (New York Times; June 26, 2020)
• Soul Food Love: Healthy Recipes Inspired by One Hundred Years of Cooking in a Black Family by Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams (Clarkson Potter; 2015)
• High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America, dir. by Roger Ross Williams, Yoruba Richen, and Jonathan Clasberry (Netflix; 2021)
• "Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?" by Joel Rudinow (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52 (1); 1994)

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This episode was made by: 

• Producer: Erikk Geannikis
• Editor: Amy Drozdowska
• Engineer: Paul Robert Mounsey
• Vox Audio Fellow: Victoria Dominguez
• Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall

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