LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A new book from one of Kentucky's top poets is full of family recipes.
"Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts" is equal parts cookbook and history. It shows how an often unobserved Black history in Eastern Kentucky survived through generations of bold women who faced slavery, famine and racism. Their spirits live on in the book's author, Crystal Wilkinson, every time she's in the kitchen.
"The recipes are written down," she said, "but I think recipes are in the body. They are in the memory. Especially things that you make a lot and were made a lot in your family."
Her grandmother, Christine Wilkinson, made a lot of chicken and dumplings. It's one of the many recipes featured in the book.
"I come from fluffy dumpling people," Crystal said as she prepared biscuit dough. She mixed it with a fork, working it out by hand afterward.
"Sometimes when I'm kneading dough I look down and remember what my grandmother's hands looked like when she was doing this," she explained, but there are some differences. Crystal doesn't pluck the feathers off a bird or use a glass to roll out the biscuit dough.
The ingredients tell their own story about women who made the most out of what they had—broth and bread used to make a little chicken go a long way. Around the time of the Great Depression, grandmother Christine was married with mouths to feed.
"This is comfort food from the hills. A one-pot meal fit for country royalty," Crystal read aloud from "Praisesong" as the dumplings boiled in the broth.
Crystal's on tour promoting the book, conjuring kitchen ghosts across America. In Lexington, she shared the excitement with most of her family. Cousin Regina Turner helped out with some of the family history. She visited—a surprise to Crystal—from D.C.
"It's a dream," Turner said. "I'm so happy that Crystal decided to do this. Our family's very close-knit over the years and it deserves to be memorialized."
Though many fans came for a signature, Erica Goodman left with a mission to preserve her own family tale.
"Our stories are constantly getting either rewritten or completely erased. And so it's our responsibility to be able to tell our history to those generations to come," she said.
"The family lives on, as long as the book is there," Aunt Lovester Simpson Wilkinson said.
A book capturing a history that already lived through generations of Black womens' kitchens. Crystal's grateful for those ancestors, her family and the people they reached.
"People saying, y'know, 'my Italian nonna is my kitchen ghost.' I'm grateful to each one of those people too who have taken the time to tell me how the book's affected them," Crystal said.
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