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Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Food-writing Pioneer Explores African American Cuisine, In All Its Splendor, In New Cookbook, by Adrian Miller, Los Angeles Times

“Where are the black food writers?” asks Toni Tipton-Martin.

A native Angeleno, author and community activist, Tipton-Martin has frequently wrestled with that question during her 31-year food-writing career. In the 1980s, the Los Angeles Times hired her as a food reporter. A few years later, she made history with the Cleveland Plain Dealer when she became the first African American woman to edit the food section of a major newspaper.

Being a food journalist of color was a lonely existence then, and is only marginally less so now, but Tipton-Martin, through her writing and advocacy, has been a leading voice in trying to change that.

Why Libraries Have A Public Spirit That Most Museums Lack, by Laura Raicovich, Hyperallergic

At a time when museums are being held accountable by a variety of publics for every aspect of their operations — from programming and exhibition-making to financial support and governance structures — perhaps it is useful to look at parallel institutions that are doing similar work for guidance on alternative ways of working.

I’ll Have What She’s Having, by Priya Krishna, New York Times

While some of these elements — group seating, shared entrees, preset menus — seem familiar, what’s novel is these restaurants’ underlying ethos: The goal is to bring people of all backgrounds together in this splintered time, to make eating out a collective enterprise. Communal dining, of course, isn’t new. But these restaurants are both more urbane and more ambitious than their forebears — places where the food, wine and design are considered so carefully that the casual, family-style service and ambience feel, at first, like paradoxes. The format seems theatrical, or at least experiential: In these establishments, customers aren’t only paying for the food but for the upending of dining-out conventions. Restaurants are, to some extent, valued for their predictability and consistency — in this new model, the element of surprise is part of the attraction.

What Happens To Your Used Stuff? 'Secondhand' Tells Of A Billion-Dollar Industry, by Gabino Iglesias, NPR

In Secondhand, Minter starts with a strange question: What happens to peoples' stuff when they die? He answers the question in the first chapter — but this only opens a door into the hidden, multibillion-dollar industry of reuse. With grace, a keen eye for detail, an interesting cast of character that spend their life reselling used things, and the perennially curious mind of a great journalist, Minter takes readers from the backs of thrift stores all across the United States to small apartments and vintage shops in Tokyo, and from a truck in Mexico to an office in Mumbai, to show the inner workings of one of the world's largest markets. Along the way, he interviews many fascinating people who make a living buying, selling, and throwing away what others discard — or leave behind after their deaths — all while wondering what the future holds for this business in an era where consumers crave new things.

In 'Some Of Us Are Very Hungry Now,' Revelations Morph Into Mirrors, by Gabino Iglesias, NPR

These essays shine with broken humanity and announce the arrival of a new voice in contemporary nonfiction, but they do so with heaps of melancholia and frustration instead of answers. That Perry can hurt us and keep us asking for more is a testament to his talent as a storyteller.