The second cookbook from the formerly anonymous vegan cooking blog that blew up internet food circles last year has a different focus: party grub.
Published a couple months back, the latest stovetop literature by the controversial pair behind Thug Kitchen is a follow-up to their flagship book of food formulas, offering 100-plus recipes for “social motherfuckers” who have places to be. It’s divided into five chapters, including breakfast, starters and mains, and like its predecessor, the book embraces explicit language.
“No matter what you choose, this pantry staple is not only delicious but affordable as fuck,” reads the book’s breakdown of Italian-style pasta.
One might think (no? just me?) that the backlash that greeted TK’s first print installment might deter the authors from debuting a second, but nope. Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway, the 30-year-old white authors referred to as “masterminds” by the Epicurious post that revealed their identity, seem fine with specializing in what critics have called privilege, “digital blackface” and appropriation — at least until the novelty of their shtick wears off.
Afro-Vegan author Bryant Terry says it’s no coincidence that fans imagined that black men like Samuel L. Jackson and Ghostface Killah were the “voice” of TK, telling readers to “give peas a fucking chance.” In a piece for CNN around the time of the first book’s publication, Terry discussed an offense worse than using African-American culture for amusement and profit: misrepresentation. Local, seasonal foods and concepts in the vein of farm-to-table “were not news to a community who was enslaved and brought to America generations ago to help develop the agrarian South.”
“Whether or not the hipsters and health nuts charmed by Thug Kitchen realize this, vegetarian, vegan and plant-strong culture in the black experience predates pernicious thug stereotypes,” Terry wrote. “Said another way, the Thug Kitchen’s central comic conceit doesn’t jibe with reality.”
Taking the loose theme of this year’s Books Issue into consideration, TK could be categorized as a guilty pleasure. Tasty-looking photographs may fulfill the I-know-I-shouldn’t-eat-six-poppyseed-protein-waffles-buuut indulgence for some, while admirers defending TK might give the duo’s problematic use of “thug” a pass because “at least it’s paired with healthful recipes.”
Maybe the best thing the brand is doing is sparking conversation. Consider what Dr. Amie “Breeze” Harper, founder of The Sistah Vegan Project, wrote in 2014 after a California protest halted a reading of TK:
“The book’s support and ‘post-racial’ comments by a significant number of mostly white people says… ‘I don’t have the trauma of racialized and state violence against my body that Black people do (and other racial minorities do). Why should I care about the word ‘thug’ and the racially violent history and recent events (i.e. Oscar Grant and Michael Brown) that trails behind it?’” Harper said. “It would have been wonderful if the protesters and authors could have agreed to have the book reading and then have an intersectional talk about why a significant number of vegans of color have found the use of thug problematic. I think it would have been a wonderful opportunity to discuss these issues to try to build bridges and solidarity with anti-speciesist and anti-racist movements.”
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2015.