Vibration Cooking: or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl

By Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and Verta Mae

Book Overview

Vibration Cooking was first published in 1970, not long after the term "soul food" gained common use. While critics were quick to categorize her as a proponent of soul food, Smart-Grosvenor wanted to keep the discussion of her cookbook/memoir focused on its message of food as a source of pride and validation of black womanhood and black "consciousness raising."

In 1959, at the age of nineteen, Smart-Grosvenor sailed to Europe, "where the bohemians lived and let live." Among the cosmopolites of radical Paris, the Gullah girl from the South Carolina low country quickly realized that the most universal lingua franca is a well-cooked meal. As she recounts a cool cat's nine lives as chanter, dancer, costume designer, and member of the Sun Ra Solar-Myth Arkestra, Smart-Grosvenor introduces us to a rich cast of characters. We meet Estella Smart, Vertamae's grandmother and connoisseur of mountain oysters; Uncle Costen, who lived to be 112 and knew how to make Harriet Tubman Ragout; and Archie Shepp, responsible for Collard Greens la Shepp, to name a few. She also tells us how poundcake got her a marriage proposal (she didn't accept) and how she perfected omelettes in Paris, enchiladas in New Mexico, biscuits in Mississippi, and feijoida in Brazil. "When I cook, I never measure or weigh anything," writes Smart-Grosvenor. "I cook by vibration."

This edition features a foreword by Psyche Williams-Forson placing the book in historical context and discussing Smart-Grosvenor's approach to food and culture. A new preface by the author details how she came to write Vibration Cooking.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820337390
• ISBN13: 9780820337395
• Release Date: April 2011
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

My taste buds are still tingling

FAscinating book, both from a cultural perspective and a culinary one. I've listened to the author when she was on Public Radio, which, along with my love of cooking and quest for all things southern, is what drew me to this book. Sit back, relax and catch the vibrations of what the food is telling you to do.

Voice from the 60s

This is an unusual narrative cookbook, an unapologetic, in-your-face story of a young black woman from the south who travels to Paris on the eve of the 1960s. I enjoyed the book because I grew up in the same era, but on the opposite coast, with very different experiences,although both the author and I grew up very poor. Still, white poor isn't exactly the same as black poor, and so it was a peek into a different existence, of a brighter more energetic person than I. Some of the recipes are rather vague, and it is assumed the reader already knows how to cook. Some are very clear and easy to follow. Reading this book almost 30 years after it was written, the slang of the 1960s seems dated and a little tedious.