Mixing Memory and Desire

Author Lee Johnson describes Mixing Memory and Desire: How History Shaped the Foods of the Caribbean as ‘a food book with a large side dish of history.’ It is not a cookbook – there are no recipes – or a forbidding history text filled with events and dates, but a primer for all readers of how the Caribbean’s turbulent history led to its distinctive cuisine. It is told in an entertaining and readable style, infused with appropriate poetic and song lyric extracts, and garnished with exquisite line drawings executed by the author. Starting with the food culture of the Taino, Johnson profiles the culinary cultures of the Spanish, African, English, French, Madeiran (Portuguese), Chinese, Indian, Syrian, and Jewish peoples and the crops they brought with them. He highlights the fact that, while food that is elevated to cuisine in Europe and in most parts of Asia has traditionally been defined by the upper and ruling classes, in the Caribbean it was the very lowest class, the poorest people, who determined the culinary culture. The book’s extensive appendix details both the indigenous foods and those that made their way into the region. And for readers wishing to delve deeper into the history of the anglophone Caribbean, there is an extensive bibliography of which academic historians would be proud.