In the 20 years since If I Can Cook / You Know God Can was first published, black culture has continued to remember, incorporate and evolve in music, art, food and life in general, as more and more generations share histories and memories across the African diaspora. The late Obie Award-winning playwright Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf) modernizes her journey with vegan recipes that nonetheless stay connected to their roots.
Providing a poetic, artistic meandering through a web of connected cultural influences that have defined and created what the world has come to know as African cooking, Shange unravels the complicated twisting pathways by which food and flavor have developed throughout African culture. She acknowledges the "ironic freedom" of former African slaves following the call of "Westward, ho!" to Oklahoma, where "a beef pot roast for supper, a venison pot roast or buffalo stew was... satisfying." Yet, "We also know that black soldiers, the Buffalo soldiers, were definitively responsible for the containment and oppression of many Native American tribes."
There is no recipe that has not been touched by the influences of another people, time and place. Do not expect a traditional cookbook with listed and measured ingredients and exact cooking times. Do enjoy Shange's intensely personal experiences with food, the oral tradition she transcribes onto paper when describing food preparation, and the stories of the people who taught her how to make it or who she made a meal for. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.