A super interesting take on a cookbook.

I loved reading this one! Great recipes and the photos are amazing. What I really loved was the back story - Crystal's family history notes, the photos and the reasons behind the recipes. It's a true homage to her roots and family. I love the feeling of the kitchen ghosts watching over new generations of cooks.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a temporary, digital ARC in return for my review. This is one to purchase in hardcover to savor many times over!

A lyrical and deeply compelling blend of memoir and history, exploring Wilkinson’s genealogy and the legacy of Black Appalachian women.

Thanks to NetGalley and Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press for the opportunity to read this remarkable book! Warmly written memoir with delicious recipes, a tribute to family with photos. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I know I want a copy to hold, to sift through, to cook from and to have on my shelf.

Part memoir, part cookbook, this book is a delight. Wilkinson is a talented storyteller and shares her history and heritage growing up in Black Appalachia. She shares many recipes, several of which I'm anxious to try. Informative yet cozy, I would recommend this book in a physical format to really get to enjoy all the pictures. I read this book in smaller chunks over time and found it a comforting book to come back to time after time! A great, unique read!

What a fun book - biography, cookbook, family, slavery, history, covid, gardening, and traditions.

This story starts out being about family history and food of Kentucky. This is the story of a family and what happened to them. It is about food and recipes that were passed down through generations. I loved the pictures that were included about the people that were being discussed. I also loved the pictures of the food along with the recipes.

Then we get to Covid and how the family responded to staying home. Some people that had never gardened before started trying to grow their own food. How the quiet life impacted this family and changed their life. The ability to cook became much more important. Time was spent shopping at home and having groceries delivered along with new kitchen appliances. Teaching kids to cook using Zoom.

There was a whole chapter on celebrating birthdays and the food required. There are whole chapters on blackberries, cornbread and biscuits. There were chapters about food and traditions at Christmas,

Quote from book - "Grief is, of coarse, deeply connected to love."

I feel like Crystal Wilkinson has given us a gift with this book. It is a treasure. It’s a privilege to have access to these amazing, deeply personal recipes and stories of her family. She has helped to give voice to Black Appalachians past and present, and shown a light onto a history that is virtually unknown (or rather ignored) yet so vibrant and important. I cannot love this book more, The pictures, stories, and recipes together weave a kind of magic that makes this more than a cookbook, more than a family history, it’s really a thing of beauty.

As a child of Appalachia (though white so I can only speak from that experience and as a white reader) and a homemaker/family historian, this book sang to my soul. The recipes were lovely, dating back to the 1700s and carrying with them so much history and love.
This book shares so much of a culture that is often overlooked in history and preserves what is at risk of being forgotten.
Its a beautiful book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Black American history, Appalachian history, and history around food.

Crystal Wilkinson's Praisesong For The Kitchen Ghosts is a uniquely special cookbook that mixes family recipes with history. I absolutely loved reading about her family's rich Appalachian roots and the recipes that have been handed down through the generations. This is a beautiful cookbook filled with the author's family photos mixed with great photos of the food as well and is beautifully written family history that brings to light five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and the dishes that they left behind for future generations to enjoy.

I love pouring over this book. It is just so gorgeous and wonderful to read. I love the photographs, recipes, and stories. For lovers of High on the Hog and Chasing Flavor.

Crystal Wilkinson is a gorgeous writer who deserves to be better known. I was surprised and delighted when I learned of the concept for her new book; "kitchen ghosts" captures the idea that her ancestors are always with her, and the women are most present when she's chopping vegetables or stirring something at the stove. I hope this proves to be her breakout—she's a gorgeous writer and many readers would be delighted to discover her work.

It’s not often I find a cookbook that is as much a story as a collection of recipes. Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts is such a book. Crystal Wilkinson writes a lovely, flowing memoir of her family as seen through the food they grew and consumed. Blending elements of a family scrapbook (snapshots of Wilkinson’s people likely taken with an old Kodak camera) are interspersed with fancier photos of the current finished recipes Wilkinson shares. Each recipe is connected in specific ways to her family, ways which are communicated through gently told tales of her “kitchen ghosts” or all the women who came before her.

Wilkinson’s earliest ancestors settled in Kentucky - those who were enslaved and those who were free. They grew up and worked the land on Indian Creek and reveled in the bounty that the land provided. Wilkinson provides a rare insight to the black folks who inhabited parts of Appalachia. While the folkways and stories are unique to Wilkinson’s family, I recognized much of the food she writes about from stories told by my mother-in-law, a white woman who grew up dirt-poor in the hills of West Virginia. In fact, I read the section on poke to my husband, who educated me about the beautiful but poisonous plant last summer. Turns out his mother planted it on her farmland in western NY because it reminded her of home in West Virginia. The steps Wilkinson shares on how to safely handle and consume poke are identical to the process my mother-in-law used, Same thing for how to wash and cook greens.

General observation not really related to the book: As I’ve learned more about racism in the last few years, I’ve observed that when it comes to food, we are very alike in our traditions and approaches to fixing things to eat. Food seems to be a common ground.

This is one of the most enjoyable, readable cookbooks I’ve read in years and I’ll be buying a copy for myself. I’m definitely making Jam Cake and caramel icing, although there are plenty of wonderful recipes to try.

I LOVED this book. As a food historian, this is the type of work I am consistently hoping to find. The way Wilkinson weaves together familial history and recipes while also providing a broader historical perspective is executed flawlessly. This book was so deeply personal, but instead of making the text unrelatable, it actually made it feel more familiar to me. I loved feeling like I was meeting the family members Wilkinson writes about, and feeling like I could walk into my kitchen and find them there, waiting to cook with me. Also, as someone who grew up in and around Appalachia, I loved getting to see some of the recipes and how they were inspired by the region. Overall, this book is an automatic buy for me, and I can't wait to try out the recipes within.

This book really feels like a labor of love! I share so many sentiments with the author of loved ones passed but with their essences still lingering, especially in the kitchen. I’m sure other readers will feel the same. Crystal Wilkerson is a very talented writer and I look forward to reading more of her work. Historical and imagined all in one book with old, priceless photos. Enjoyed it and am even trying some of the recipes!

This is more than just your average cook book. This is history, a memoir of struggle and strife. The author shares her family's stories as she shares their recipes. This is poignant and something I'd like to see as a new trend. Trying these recipes feels like meeting family,

Wow what a beautiful book. I enjoyed learning all this history about food in Black Appalachia. This is such an interesting read. I feel like I learn so much about Appalachian culture and how it is different than what everyone has seen thus far.

A great book club book for discussion.

Thanks NetGalley for a chance to read this book.

Thank you, @netgalley , the author @crystalwilki , and the publisher @tenspeedpress an imprint of @clarksonpotter for this earc copy in return for an honest review.

When I applied for this book through netgalley, I wasn't too sure exactly what I was getting into. I am a history buff at heart and love learning new recipes. So this book sounded right up my alley. Though what I wasn't expecting was to be brought to tears on multiple occasions. Crystals' family history is fascinating and moving, and I couldn't help but reflect on my own. My life is not comparable at all, but what is is the love and connection we both share from cooking recipes passed down through the matriarchs in our lives and the ones from the past.
I loved the sentiment of making recipes better or becoming a better chef than those before us. I feel like that's ultimately what our family wants from us to be better. To take what they taught us and use them as the foundation to build on top of.Though sometimes I feel like I get caught up in keeping things the same to preserve them. When in reality tweaking them as I gain more knowledge is also keeping tradition alive.

I really enjoyed this style of memoir and always find it fascinating how much you can learn about a person when they talk about food and what they ate as a child. Food is a gateway to the soul and a tether to our ancestors, and The Prariesong for the Kitchen Ghosts illustrates this beautifully.

In the interest of full disclosure, this review is specifically regarding a DRC copy of the book from Net Galley, so while I imagine this eBook was pretty close to finalized, some details may have been changed between my copy and the official release.

Many thanks to Net Galley for the advance reading copy of this fantastic eBook.

I would recommend this book to people with an interest in a wide variety of cultural foodways or particularly in Black, Appalachian, and/or southern foodways; anyone specifically interested in reading about Appalachian culture with a focus on the diversity of Appalachian experiences; and I would love for well-meaning outsiders who have misconceptions about Appalachian culture as inherently white to read this and widen their understanding. I also think a lot of my fellow white Appalachians need to read books like this, because I’ve seen a lot of people fail to grasp that Black Appalachian folks are not any less Appalachian than we are. I think the strongest aspect of this book is the throughline of grief and connection through cuisine as a distinxt expression of love, memory, and appreciation. On the flipside, I don’t think any aspect of this book is weak. I expected there to be a little more photography than there was, and I think more of it being featured wouldn’t hurt; overall, it’s well-balanced. I’m looking forward to checking out Wilkinson’s fiction oeuvre as part of my endeavor to read more Appalachian literature.

The construction of the text guides us through personal and familial anecdotes, as well as the context in which the foods came to be what they are, before showing us the recipes featured in those memories. Photography spreads of meals at hand accompanies the recipes, and photographs of Wilkinson’s family and ancestors are peppered throughout the book. The exposition through anecdotes is masterful, gorgeous—it’s incredibly evocative, effective at painting an image of memories for the reader, so intimate that it feels like our own. Every morsel of this book was impactful to me; half of this book resonated deeply in my soul as an Appalachian and the other half conveyed to me new dimensions of Black Appalachian history and culture. On just as many levels as I can’t relate to Wilkinson, I relate to her deeply. I get the impression that she chose what to include in this book very deliberately, and she did a wonderful job at that.

There’s a powerful throughline here of finding one’s ancestral path and identity through cuisine, of grief and love, of survival and homage. The recurring theme of connecting with family, alive and dead, over shared experiences and illuminating the dark corners of memory, with cuisine as a conduit, is staggeringly poignant and squeezes my heart. Wilkinson’s writing style is absolutely stunning. Syntax and phrasing is distinct and fresh, conveying meaning and intention clearly without recycling played-out cliches. The grammar is solid and consistent, not jumping out at me or distracting me from the reading experience at all, just how I like it. The use of description, memory, and metaphor in storytelling here are incredibly evocative and there’s a distinctly Appalachian rhythm to the writing in this book. Her words have a way of cutting right to the heart of something, and this book made me tear up every time I sat down to read it.

I absolutely “savored” this book. Every story has several recipes and every recipe has a story. Taken from Crystal’s past, the history from Indian Hill in the Appalachian’s, told the tale of hardworking loving ancestors who made due with what they had. Yet, the recipes were made with love and fortitude. The recipes I have tried and loved: Basket Meeting Green Beans and New Potatoes, Caramel Cake, Chicken Salad with Curry, Garlicky White Soup Beans, and in the Crock Pot now is Ron’s Pulled Pork.
This book is a must for all lovers of history and Good Southern Cooking. I applaud you Crystal! Very Well Done!

The recipes are so awesome. I can hardly wait to make the biscuits. I loved your stories that went with each section. I do not have many recipes that evoke those type of memories for me, but I love that you do. This is such a special cookbook. I will be getting a copy for my own kitchen. Thank you for allowing me to preview this book.

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks (Hardcover)
by Crystal Wilkinson
Note worthy book for personal history, recipes, and black history in the mountains of Kentucky.
The history shows the difficulty of black land owners in the Appalachian region. The family survived slavery, Jim crow laws, and the great depression. The family problems affect her entire life, from being raised by her grand mother, to the poverty and financial struggles. She is inspiring that she does not blame the family history for their struggles but social inequity and prejudices.
The recipes are introduced not only in the historical concepts but a modern recipes. As you read the story you want to try the recipes for the wonderous descriptions tingle your appetite.