Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Join us to learn more about America’s modern culinary history told through the lives of seven pathbreaking chefs and food writers. Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? Award-winning author Mayukh Sen has produced a group biography about seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. His book Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes. Mayukh Sen―a queer, brown child of immigrants―reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration and gender, Sen challenges the way people look at what’s on their plate―and the women whose labor, o