Toni Tipton-Martin, an award-winning food journalist and author of "The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks," will speak at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture Friday, April 6, at noon (purchase tickets). Tipton-Martin spoke with us about writing the book and her desire to share the stories of African-American women and the role they played in America’s food culture.
Richmond magazine: What is the message you want your audience to take away?
Toni Tipton-Martin: The message of my work is that African-American food professionals have had a varied and diverse experience in the creation of American food. Our experience was not limited to survival cooking and what has been depicted as soul food. Highlighting the professional business-oriented management type of activities that African-Americans were engaged in even during enslavement is the main message.
RM: Why is it vital for you to share these stories?
TTM: They have been lost in history and as a result of that African-Americans in general, but people of all races really, have a disconnected relationship with our African-American food history and that means we are not taking advantage of the healthy cooking dynamic. We’re not interested in understanding the economic independence that can be obtained through food and work and that is important to individuals as well as to our larger communities — for people to know we can change lives using food as a mechanism.
RM: How has your message affected readers or people who have heard you speak?
TTM: I have been a blessed to see the difference this message makes in people’s lives. With every talk that I give more and more people are influenced. Whether that means they go back and investigate their own personal history, whether they are able to reconnect with a history that they have suppressed. For young people especially it's creating a connection between current food trends we think of as sometimes being exclusive to elites, or upper class, or frankly to white people only. It creates an opportunity for young people to understand their ancestors were vegetarians, they were educators who understood food science, inventors who created tools that made cooking easier.
RM: Through the process of writing this book, did you ever struggle?
TTM: It’s been an enlightening and challenging experience. I have been thinking and talking about this work for over 30 years. I pitched this book over the years to publishers and literary agents in several forms that were all rejected. I don’t think they thought I was the person to bring this forward. That’s why there was so much acclaim for this book because the design took everyone by surprise.
RM: What do you think changed, making a publisher give it a green light?
TTM: Social media for sure. Antiquarian Book Sellers posted their inventory, so I was able to have access suddenly to stores I normally would not know about which allowed me to collect all these books. In my frustration of knowing no one would publish [the book], the Internet gave me a platform. I initially presented this as a blog so I could test market whether anyone was interested. The [University of Texas] saw it and came to me and said they wanted to publish. I gave them high praise for the gift.
RM: Were you surprised by what you unearthed?
TTM: Yes, I was. You will notice that there are very limited recipes in The Jemima Code, and that’s intentional. The message was already complex enough, and we wanted people to fall in love with these characters as I had first. The next phase is a recipe book, which were shooting photography for now. Originally projected for February 2019 but we're not sure where we're going to land now. There will be a book of healthy living habits of my mom’s mind and those of the ancestors in these books. The books of The Jemima Code are the basis of all my work, and they are the role models, and all I want to do is grow their identities.
RM: Are there any volumes or books you’re in search of?
TTM: Yes, there is. It was published in 1881, and everyone knows that I’m in search of it and it became available at an auction in New York last year. I joked around I was looking [through] my husband’s pockets and sofa cushions, and people begged me to start a GoFundMe campaign. As a journalist I was weirded out, but people talked about how important this work mattered to them, so I did it and raised $10,000 in 10 days. We lost the auction to the New York Public Library. It’s called What Miss Fisher Knows About Southern Cooking. The pursuit of the books was as much of the story as the rewriting it and telling it and learning from the books. So, with every success for the most obscure books I just got animated to find the next one. I [freelanced] as a stay-at-home mom to keep raising money to find the books.
RM: How do you connect health, heritage and history?
TTM: I think we all understand that role models matter. People are inspired and encouraged and uplifted by role models, and the obesity epidemic in this country is having a catastrophic impact in the black community because of food desserts. The more that people remember that their grandmothers and great grandmothers were farmers, and had gardens, and ate vegetables primarily because meat was a luxury [the better].