Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women

Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women
Alissa Wilkinson
Broadleaf Books (June 28, 2022), 203 pages
Kindle edition $17.99, Amazon hardcover $22.61

In Salty, Alissa Wilkinson discusses the lives of women she admires and whom she would like to bring together for a hypothetical dinner party. And what a range of women she selects. She devotes each chapter to an individual woman and ends the chapter with a recipe that reflects that woman’s character.

Wilkinson includes two novelists in her dinner party. She writes about Laurie Colwin, whose novels describe ordinary, white, middle-class Americans who manage to mess up their lives. Her recipe is Lentil Soup and No-Knead Bread. But then she discusses Octavia Butler, an African American writer of speculative fiction who died in 2006, but whose work is experiencing something of a revival these days. Butler’s dish is Vegetarian Chili with Winter Squash because the alien race in her trilogy Lilith’s Brood is vegetarian.

The author gives ample attention to women involved in political struggle. She writes about Ella Baker, who was a civil rights activist in the South and the force behind the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She was not one to spend time in the kitchen but loved sharing meals with people. Appropriately, her dish is Louisiana-Style Shrimp Salad. The political philosopher and anti-fascist activist Hannah Arendt was also not interested in cooking but loved her cocktail parties, where she could engage in extended conversation. Wilkinson assigns Arendt the Stiff Gibson, a form of martini.

Conversely, Wilkinson pays homage to women dedicated to food. She tells us about Edna Lewis, out of the ordinary because she was a Black woman who worked as a chef in New York City in the 1940s and then opened her own short-lived restaurant. She also published well-received cookbooks. Then there is Agnès Varda, who wrote about food and cooking in post-World War II Britain, where many desirable (even essential) ingredients were rationed or difficult (if not impossible) to find.

Of course, such a dinner party would not be complete without Alice B. Toklas. Her life partner Gertrude Stein wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, as we all know, but Toklas wrote The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (yes, it was two words). As an expatriate with Stein in Paris, Toklas did the cooking on the cook’s day off, and had to deal with the shortages of wartime France.

Finally, Wilkinson pays tribute to Maya Angelou, whom she puts at the head the table for her hypothetical dinner party. Angelou, in addition to her other prolific output, wrote cookbooks. Who knew? I didn’t. And Angelou’s dish? Poached Pears in Port Wine.

Salty is delightful reading and pays well-deserved homage to nine strong and capable women.