Crystal Wilkinson

I don’t remember who introduced me to Crystal Wilkinson, but several years ago, I went to a writing conference because she was teaching the fiction session. The conference was in Asheville near my family. Also, the host, Image Journal, had nominated my work for a Pushcart Prize, where it received an Honorable Mention. But I wouldn’t have gone if Crystal hadn’t been teaching, I am a fan of her work.

Yet, when I heard about her new book, I didn’t intend to read it. It’s a cookbook, I thought. I’m not a cook. I was talking with a friend about Crystal Wilkinson and her work. My friend said, “Oh, no. Read it for her relationship with her ancestors.” This is why you have conversations with folks, even if you think you’re saying something negative.

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts is a beautiful book. Physically beautiful, with cookbook-level photos of the food and snapshots Crystal took of her family through the years. It’s a structurally beautiful book, with each chapter wound around a particular food, culminating in the recipes. As memoir mixes with conjured presence of her ancestors, the overall narrative arc moves deeper and deeper into her relationship with those who came before her and those coming after. The heartbeat of her grandmother and grandfather, in particular, beat on the page. In that, Praisesong is an emotionally beautiful book.

Crystal Wilkinson is Affrilachian, a Black American from Appalachia. Her family was in Kentucky. I grew up spending time with my Scotch-Irish grandparents on a scrub farm in Mississippi. But the foods and the way she writes about them–blackberry pickings, biscuits every morning for breakfast–awoke memories from the farm on Spring Ridge Road. Her way with cornbread and hoecakes was introduced to me by my Delta husband from Memphis. Food is so intimately personal and yet there is that long-distance connection across place.

A last note of genius. After this gently unfolding story, the book ends with the most hilarious scene of Crystal working with her children as they cook. I couldn’t stop laughing. Even if I’d gotten nothing else, these pages were worth reading the whole book. Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. I think you’ll love it.