In his debut book, Taste Makers, journalist Mayukh Sen showcases the lives of seven immigrant women who vitalized America’s culinary landscape with the flavors of their homelands. Sen absents himself as an authority, choosing instead to serve as a medium through which each woman’s personality and food voice is brought to life for a twenty-first-century audience. Tenderly weaving together biographical sketches, Sen begins the tremendous work needed to center key figures who have been historically marginalized by an increasingly monolithic food establishment—one whose power is synergized, rather than objectively critiqued, by the people and institutions at the apex of food media. Scholars have been drawing attention to this troubling dynamic for much of the twenty-first century, and Sen joins a young cadre of journalists who are working to illuminate, unsettle, and democratize a system that has historically demeaned women, people of color, and non-European immigrants.

To accomplish this goal,...

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