Alice Randall is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Wind Done Gone, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Rebel Yell, and Ada’s Rules, and the only person to ever study with Julia Child for credit at Harvard. An acknowledged authority on African-American cookbooks, Randall teaches the course “Soul Food, in Text, as Text” at Vanderbilt University. Her latest book is Soul Food Love: Healthy Recipes Inspired by One Hundred Years of Cooking in a Black Family (Clarkson Potter). In May 2012, Alice Randall penned an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Black Women and Fat,” chronicling her quest to be “the last fat black woman” in her family. She turned to her daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, for help. Together they overhauled the way they cook and eat, translating recipes and traditions handed down by generations of black women into easy, affordable, and healthful dishes. Soul Food Love relates the authors’ fascinating family history (which mirrors that of much of black America in the twentieth century), explores the often fraught relationship African-American women have had with food, and forges a new way forward that honors their cultural and culinary heritage.
