As I mentioned in a previous article (Taste of cultures), food is much more than substance. It is memory, identity, a sense of belonging …and a mix of these aspects all at once.
The kitchen is the place where stories are told and traditions are preserved. For people from different backgrounds, the kitchen can become a place of connection, discovery, and personal integration. The following books are great examples.
She Who Tastes, Knows
is a newly published book by Durkhanai Ayubi. It is a remarkable memoir about how food can connect us all.
Afghan-Australian author Durkhanai Ayubi shares her family’s journey from Afghanistan to Australia and how cooking preserved cultural identity in exile. Food becomes a way to maintain dignity, memory, and a sense of belonging while adapting to a new country.
This memoir is particularly powerful for discussions of migration, displacement, and cultural resilience.
The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen
by Yasmin Khan blends recipes with cultural storytelling to explore Iran’s culinary heritage and its global diaspora.
Through journeys across Iran and conversations with migrants, Khan connects dishes to history, politics, and identity, showing how food carries memory across borders. The book highlights regional diversity, seasonal ingredients, and the social rituals surrounding meals, while also addressing displacement and belonging among Iranians living abroad.
By weaving personal narrative with accessible recipes, it presents cooking as both preservation and adaptation, illustrating how cuisine evolves yet remains a powerful anchor of culture, community, and home for people navigating migration, identity, and change today.
The Cooking Gene
by culinary historian Michael W. Twitty is one of the most profound explorations of food and identity in recent years.
Blending memoir, history, and travel writing, the book traces African American culinary traditions back to their African roots while examining the painful legacy of slavery and cultural exchange in the American South.
What makes this work particularly compelling is how it frames food as both inheritance and resistance. Cooking becomes a way to reclaim identity and understand how cultures merge, even under oppressive circumstances. It demonstrates that integration in the kitchen is not always voluntary, yet it still produces new cultural expressions that endure for generations.
Crying in H Mart
Musician and writer Michelle Zauner offers an emotionally resonant exploration of grief, heritage, and belonging through Korean food. After losing her mother, she reconnects with her Korean identity through cooking and eating traditional dishes.
This memoir illustrates how food can restore cultural ties that feel distant or fragmented. For second-generation immigrants especially, cooking becomes an act of integration—not just into a new society, but back into one’s own heritage. It also shows how multicultural identity can be rediscovered through sensory memory..
In Bibi’s Kitchen
by Somali chef Hawa Hassan and food writer Julia Turshen, the book celebrates the culinary knowledge of grandmothers (“bibis”) from eight African countries along the Indian Ocean, including Somalia, Eritrea, Mozambique, and South Africa.
Through recipes and oral histories, the book preserves traditions shaped by migration, colonisation, and trade routes while highlighting women’s resilience and cultural authority. Personal stories connect food to memory, family, and identity, particularly within diaspora communities. More than a cookbook, it is a cultural archive that honours intergenerational knowledge and shows how cooking sustains belonging, continuity, and pride across borders, histories, and changing social landscapes.
In an increasingly interconnected world, these books remind us that sharing a meal may be one of the most powerful ways to understand one another. Through recipes, stories, and memories, food becomes a universal language, one capable of bridging cultures, generations, and identities.
Buon appetito!
Alessandra Giacchi