Tyree Barnette doesn't consider himself a food writer. Instead, he looks at his writing as a way of communicating his African American heritage. "I'm still very much a student of writing," he says on the latest episode of The New Writer's Room.
But Barnette has mastered writing about the intersection of food and culture. His 2019 essay of SBS Voices shares the legacy behind American soul food, revealing that it's more than the stereotype of "unsavoury, unhealth, slave food."
But growing up, Barnette says, "It was just food. Food that I ate."
And it's that familiarity that Barnette says is universal when writing about food. He says that the best way for a writer to help a reader experience a food is to tell the story of the first time you ate it or when you typically eat it.
It's one thing to write about dumplings, it's another thing to talk about the ritual of when you have dumplings.
Inviting readers to sit with you at the dinner table or observe you in the kitchen is the key to good food writing. But that can be difficult to do when writing about food that you're not familiar with.
In that case, Barnette advises that writers avoid an authoritarian stance. Centring yourself in this way is a form of . Barnette explains it as "someone...from the dominant society, mostly white, coming in and taking or discovering an established tradition or cultural practices and then claiming it as their own."
Where did it come from? Are you supposed to eat it by itself or is it meant to be eaten with other stuff? Are you eating it incorrectly?
Instead writers should dig a little bit deeper in order to understand the cultural context of the food you're writing about. Barnette says encapsulating the full experience requires writers to ask questions about food; "Where did it come from? Are you supposed to eat it by itself or is it meant to be eaten with other stuff? Are you eating it incorrectly?"
This approach, Barnette says, allows writers to "retrace those lessons...and look at things from the past with a different lens and also find commonality with other people."
But if you're just starting out, Barnette's top tip is to "write about the food that you're most passionate about and that you know the most about." And remember to be open to learning even more about it. That's where you'll find the joy of writing.
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