0:00

Hey it Francis! Thank you so much

0:02

for making the splendid he will part

0:04

of your life or your long. This

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public media podcast is only possible because

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of you. You generously welcome us in

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your kitchens and we do our best

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A splendid table.org Slashed

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Donate. And thank you. I

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printed lamb and this is the splendid table from

0:29

a pm. If

0:37

you happen to be driving

0:39

through California Wine Country, we

0:41

get to the town of

0:43

Napa. There's this massive sign

0:45

with quote from Robert Louis

0:47

Stevenson that says and the

0:49

Wine Is putting Poetry Now.

0:51

I happen to not be a drinker myself,

0:54

but the get what he means right, have

0:56

something and have flavor that changes the way

0:58

you feel. Word committee be Change casey the

1:00

World and I can say the same about

1:03

certain meals. I pad. But it's

1:05

funny. Considering how important

1:07

food is, not just to our

1:09

bodies, but to our culture, that

1:12

in our country for a very

1:14

long time, food wasn't considered really

1:16

worthy of serious contemplation, right? It's

1:19

not an art like opera, our

1:21

sculpture, or while poetry. Well, that's

1:23

changed a lot. And one of

1:26

the people most responsible for that

1:28

change is the editor, Judith Jones.

1:30

She was a legendary force in

1:33

publishing. She kind of single handedly

1:35

elevated cookbooks, the. Level that Are

1:37

Turn Our Country and later in the

1:39

show learn all about her life and

1:41

legacy with the author of her biography,

1:43

Sarah Franklin. The

1:47

first, we're. Going to talk to and

1:49

I hope oh it the best selling poet

1:51

and essayist. A Neatness Who Can talk To

1:53

You is the author of Bye Bye Bye.

1:55

A collection of short essay is all about

1:58

her favorite foods. Third, time stories

2:00

that sometimes read like poems. The

2:02

sentence is so perfect you

2:05

can't help but smile when you

2:07

read them. The pieces are full

2:09

of humor and good vibes deliciousness

2:11

and complexity just like a

2:13

great meal. So hey Amy so great

2:15

to have you. Francis I'm so

2:17

excited to see you thank you so much for

2:19

having me on. No super excited to

2:21

have you I know you're in the middle of your

2:24

book tour so thank you for making time. Absolutely. I

2:27

just love this book so much.

2:30

Oh my gosh thank you. No really it's it's

2:32

funny it's beautiful it's such

2:35

a joy to read even you

2:37

know when it shows the way to deeper things

2:40

but I do want to start with the

2:42

beginning of the book because

2:44

the like the very first paragraph of the

2:46

first essay in the book you talk about

2:49

growing up on the grounds of

2:51

a mental institution. What was that

2:54

like how did that help shape

2:56

you? Yeah you know oh my

2:58

goodness thank you so much for that question

3:00

because I think a lot of times people

3:02

either they skip over or it doesn't connect

3:04

so I was very purposeful in making that

3:06

the very first thing the reader learned

3:09

about me and I did

3:11

that purposely because that

3:14

absolutely helped shape who I

3:16

am. My

3:18

mother was a psychiatrist she's retired

3:21

now in Florida with my father but she

3:24

was a psychiatrist and she had

3:27

these four-year contracts to go from

3:29

state mental institute to state mental

3:32

institute to set up

3:34

programs you know this is in the

3:36

70s the great influx of Asian

3:38

American doctors coming over from

3:41

the Philippines and so

3:43

as a kid it was exciting like oh

3:46

here's a new place to live here's a

3:48

new place to live it was all exciting

3:50

until about middle school the

3:52

doctor's quarters was right on the periphery

3:54

of this you know 50 acre

3:58

kind of property and Then

4:00

the bus stop from me and

4:02

my sister was welcome to the

4:04

Go Under Psychiatric Institute. Either. So

4:07

not only you have a he's the only

4:09

Asian family in this little small rural town

4:11

of Western Europe that. We.

4:13

Got picked up for the first day of

4:15

classes in front of this sign so there

4:17

was a lot of like. In

4:20

a nexus the what are you but

4:22

are you okay or in as a

4:24

second of thing and I'm but it

4:26

was also. I also remember that. As

4:28

a ton of great joy kid. So

4:30

nice space to Rome and I didn't

4:33

realize this at the time bed and

4:35

we were under surveillance so the security

4:37

system of the hospital always knew where

4:39

my younger sister and I we buy

4:42

their you know all over the grounds,

4:44

roller skated and it's just became a

4:46

i'm kind of a great hang out

4:48

for my friends out. I think they're

4:51

a little leery at first but ultimately

4:53

they realized why We have this whole

4:55

place so eager to use the patients

4:57

in a. Baseball Diamonds. Are.

5:00

Basketball courts are you know when they weren't.

5:02

There, of course, By

5:05

that he was yeah, say it all

5:07

out loud may serial at how strange

5:09

maybe it's that it seemed just magical

5:11

in some ways to to me. You

5:15

know it's. It's sort of

5:17

incredible because obviously you know. Today.

5:20

You are a

5:22

beloved poet and.

5:26

Even hearing you talk about how it owes

5:28

it's hard heard of observing things and also

5:30

funny this you are. You really have watched

5:32

Syria observed and I feel like oh that's

5:34

kind of what poetry is about. It's like

5:36

a learning to observe things that are so

5:38

it's your friends were afraid of that place

5:40

because it was unknown a mysterious but you

5:42

help them see it in the way which

5:44

is also with poetry does right Yeah. Oh

5:47

really. Oh I love those connections.

5:49

Yeah. As a sort of incredible

5:51

you are destined for the usually

5:53

so now you've written this book

5:55

and it's of short like bite

5:58

sized. Food. essays Some of

6:00

them are poetic, like they feel like poems,

6:02

though they're written in prose. Some of them

6:04

are just

6:07

small stories. Some are like really, like

6:09

really tight, compact essays. But

6:11

one of them is really

6:14

beautiful, and it's about sort

6:16

of in a way letting your children explore

6:18

the world in a particular way. It's called Blackberry.

6:21

I was wondering if you would maybe read a

6:23

little bit from it for us. Absolutely. Yeah,

6:25

yeah, OK, great. This is just a small

6:28

part of the chapter. And all

6:30

the chapters in this book

6:33

are named after a specific food or

6:35

spice. So yeah, I'll just

6:37

start right at the beginning here. Blackberries.

6:41

Gardening is an exercise in

6:44

stubborn, fragrant faith that

6:46

these sticks you hold in a

6:48

feathery root ball will somehow turn

6:50

pliant and shoot wild into the

6:52

sunshine, offering fruit when you

6:54

least expect it. But that's

6:56

just what happened when my husband and

6:58

I planted our first Blackberry bush in

7:00

late February on an unusually

7:02

warm weekend here in Oxford, Mississippi.

7:06

For months, I was stubborn. I

7:08

kept watering my sticks. Storms

7:10

pounded our garden so hard, I thought

7:13

for sure those sticks would wash away.

7:16

But they held fast and turned

7:18

green and leafy, and

7:20

then tiny white blossoms gave

7:22

way to juicy, whole Blackberries

7:25

by July. My

7:27

youngest son, Jasper, gathered them in a

7:29

blue bowl for his cereal in the

7:31

morning. When the small

7:33

harvest became less plentiful, Jasper

7:36

suggested that maybe a fox

7:38

or bear might have visited first. But

7:41

his giggle, he couldn't even say it

7:43

with a straight face, and his

7:46

purple chins and fingertips gave

7:48

him away. By

7:50

the hot swell that first August, I

7:53

was thinking of the Mary Oliver poem that ends

7:55

with the line, the black

7:57

bells, the leaves, there is

7:59

the sun. happy tongue. Children

8:02

have few markers of time. My

8:05

sons never wear watches and neither have

8:07

cell phones, but I love that they

8:09

keep, as my youngest calls it, fruit

8:12

tongue. May means

8:14

strawberries, June is peaches, August

8:17

equals watermelons, and September is

8:19

persimmons. Now they have

8:21

blackberries figured late into their summer and

8:23

into their school year. Here

8:25

in the South, school starts August 1st. They

8:29

know blackberry-ing as a verb and

8:32

since they were virtual learning that year,

8:34

zooming into their classes on a picnic

8:36

table, one of their small joys was

8:39

to get up between classes, wander over

8:41

to the blackberry bush, which

8:43

had grown taller now than either of them

8:45

in just a few months, and

8:47

pop a few sun ripened drooplets

8:49

into their mouths. A

8:52

warm startle of juice edged the corners of

8:54

their smiles when they weren't careful. And since

8:57

we were all outside so much during

9:00

that time, we didn't need a

9:02

scarecrow or a whistle to shoo away the

9:04

birds. It made me remember

9:06

my youth, finding a blackberry

9:08

patch with my neighbor when we

9:10

were 11, and oh the work

9:12

it took to gather a small

9:14

cupful of them. But

9:17

the sweetness was worth all the

9:19

forearm scratches and pricks. We

9:21

drew blood to gather blood-dark juice,

9:24

juice brilliant enough that people use

9:27

it to dye cloth and hair.

9:30

During the Civil War, blackberry tea

9:32

helped alleviate dysentery and

9:35

sometimes temporary truces were

9:37

called so Union and

9:39

Confederate soldiers could pick

9:41

blackberries together. And

9:44

I'll stop there. I love it. Thank

9:47

you. Thank you so much, Amy. You

9:49

know that last part is so striking to me.

9:52

I mean I love the images, the imagery, the

9:54

idea of learning

9:56

to structure your time, you know, because from

9:58

the fruit. But that last... part when I

10:00

read it about

10:03

the soldiers, you know, like I think one of

10:05

the great hopes we have is this

10:08

idea that food can bring people together and

10:10

you know realistically you look around the

10:12

world and you're like, oh, I don't know how much

10:14

that can really happen. Things

10:17

seem really divided and fractured but

10:20

that was such a striking fact that

10:22

literally like soldiers in a war against

10:25

each other could maybe pause for a moment

10:27

to have this time with this fruit. How

10:30

did you find that fact? How did

10:32

you feel when you found it? You know,

10:34

it's so funny that one in particular

10:36

that my father told me

10:38

that like, you know, years ago, I think maybe when

10:40

I was 11 or so. The

10:42

beautiful thing about my father who is

10:45

Ken Karolai actually, I don't

10:48

know how he did it because you know

10:50

he was a respiratory therapist, he's also retired

10:52

now, wherever we moved, he

10:55

made it a point to know

10:58

all the rocks, the plants, the trees,

11:00

the fruit, everything that grew in that

11:02

area and I think,

11:05

you know, if I'm being honest, I was probably rolling

11:07

my eyes at him at 11 but

11:10

we'd be out there picking and he'd be

11:12

like, Amy, did you know, I can't do

11:14

his beautiful accent but did you know even,

11:16

you know, Confederate soldiers. So, you know,

11:19

I knew that this book would be triple fact-checked,

11:21

you know, and sure enough it was there so

11:23

it's kind of, it actually chokes me up a

11:25

little bit to think my father in his early

11:28

30s in a new country,

11:30

no matter where we were, he made

11:32

it a point to do that learning for himself so that

11:35

he could also pass it on to us.

11:38

Yeah, you know,

11:40

it's funny because I think about your work and,

11:42

you know, as a poet and an essayist, you

11:44

know, some of your most well-known work is about

11:47

nature and now about food and

11:49

I was curious as to why you write about those

11:52

subjects but maybe you kind of just answered

11:54

it but how would you respond to that?

11:56

Oh my Gosh, Francis, that's so great! That's

11:58

actually actually pretty interesting. Twenty years

12:00

of doing interviews. Nobody's actually as good

12:02

as the For. A I can put

12:05

an amazing. The dream like

12:07

essay to end all as says. For

12:09

me in the past. Summer

12:11

me think I guess. You.

12:14

Know now that I think about it out

12:16

with the one place nobody can ever make

12:19

fun of my pants for their gardens nobody

12:21

could ever make fun of. I pads for

12:23

their food and as a little girl united

12:25

had the vocabulary for it. But deserve is

12:28

a funny meme that goes on at an

12:30

if you know it it's are so the

12:32

Aardvark to not attacking that says like a

12:35

brown fast. And

12:38

like whenever he gets mad they show the

12:40

cartoon. He racism is now. Yeah, data.

12:42

So that was me basically growing up

12:44

my whole time I didn't have the

12:46

most heavily that any time I heard

12:48

you know kind of nice turkey people

12:50

like make fun of my parents access

12:53

or but or as like my mom

12:55

doesn't understand english which by the way

12:57

she was valedictorian of her english speaking

12:59

high school enough. Of this is our

13:01

first on. Someone I'd hear people like.

13:04

God. I can't understand.

13:06

You speak in delay is I would

13:08

have that Brown says that I have

13:10

a net net net you That

13:12

happened in the grocery store or like

13:15

at airports. Never. Everybody was

13:17

in awe of my parents garden

13:19

everybody was in awe of like

13:21

that cooking a new them an

13:23

early age that with my parents

13:25

like kind of happy place and

13:27

safe space that I suddenly just.

13:30

His shoulders back him up either. They

13:32

were very proud of of those two

13:34

things and I guess this is my

13:37

way of kind of calling back to

13:39

that and kind of honoring that. I'm

13:41

just. I'm. Forever.

13:43

Always slurred and just an

13:45

odd that my parents I'm.

13:48

Known as as with all immigrants come

13:50

to a new country and make their

13:53

way air and on. And

13:55

find something that they truly love. Both of them are

13:57

kind of new to each other season, so the guy.

14:00

In a period when editor lovely little

14:02

two hundred. Movie

14:04

Live with More from Hawaii and writer

14:06

and means and as who commit hockey

14:08

or in a moment and then we

14:10

get a glimpse of the like story

14:12

of a legendary editor Julius Jones with

14:14

her biographer Thera Franklin. I bred to

14:16

slam and this is the splendid table

14:18

for a Pm. I'm

14:27

Frances Lamb and this is the show for

14:29

serious cook senators. We're talking right now with

14:31

Amy This for comatose you The best selling

14:34

for with an author of the new book

14:36

Bye bye Bye Bye To Her. And.

14:41

The Introduction to the book. Euro

14:43

and I didn't actually know this, but

14:46

you're like that. That's the sort of

14:48

etymology of the word poems you guys

14:50

related to the word to make absolutely

14:52

right and yet. And.

14:55

For you obviously have home is that

14:57

a physical thing? You may be right

14:59

about cooking and how much you like

15:01

making the physical been under the physical

15:03

part of cooking making. Tangible.

15:05

Things How do you describe those

15:08

two pleasures of? They feel related

15:10

to the see like. Two.

15:12

Sides of the coined: the feel: it's just

15:14

different things but like the kind of make

15:16

you whole act idea of working on a

15:18

poem and making a poem vs working in

15:20

a kitchen and making a meal had you.

15:23

Had an unassuming. Oh

15:25

beautiful question. Beautiful Christian Well the one

15:27

thing that pops mad immediately as sat

15:29

in never now for me anyway. I

15:32

never am always. And of the people

15:34

who did this for poetry I never

15:36

know what. the ending. It's gonna be

15:38

on so I never start. us like i

15:40

have a great last line you know anything

15:42

that moves and i also don't know how

15:45

a cake is gonna turn out you know

15:47

him for profit so it is athletes such

15:49

a delightful surprise as if they hadn't it's

15:51

a hot mess of the surprise like oh

15:54

that was a bad experiment eight minutes that

15:56

did not quite work out there are elements

15:58

i didn't say it For me,

16:00

in both parts, in both cooking and

16:03

writing, the absolute joy

16:05

and contagious, just keep coming

16:07

back for more, is that

16:12

element of surprise at the end. Like

16:14

sometimes I don't even know, oh, that's

16:16

what I was writing all along was a, you

16:19

know, kind of an ode to my mother. And

16:23

I had every intent to just focus on

16:25

apples or whatever, you know, that kind

16:27

of thing, but the real heart, burning heart

16:30

of that poem is my mother

16:32

who, you know, that kind of thing. So it's

16:35

that element of surprise. You

16:37

know, I always say for writing, not just poetry,

16:39

but everything, you have 26 letters

16:42

to make magic with. And

16:45

food, it's even, I mean, I can't even,

16:47

I mean, I don't even know how

16:49

many spices there are documented. Surely someone

16:51

has done that. But how many spices

16:54

there are? Like imagine it to me,

16:56

that is so magical. The possibilities are

16:58

just, you know, just waiting for you

17:01

to experiment. I mean, I

17:03

think in both of those cases, that's why

17:05

I have no tolerance for people who say

17:07

like, I'm bored or I have writer's block.

17:09

What are you talking about? You

17:12

have 26 letters to play around with. You have

17:14

so many spices to play around with. How are

17:16

you bored on this planet? You know,

17:18

I love it. I love it so much. Well,

17:21

actually, you know, it's funny because I

17:25

was never a poet myself, and I've never been

17:27

a student of poetry, but I've always really appreciated

17:30

it. But often I find it hard, you know,

17:32

it's not like I'm not the sort of person

17:34

who like sits down and reads a

17:36

book of poetry, like for

17:39

leisure. Like I, whenever you

17:41

poetry, I want to read it with people and

17:43

I want to talk about with people because for

17:45

me, a lot of the joy in it is like, what

17:48

do these words make me think? You know, I'm a

17:50

little bit of a literal reader. Yeah, yeah, sure. And

17:53

so like I enjoy the challenge of reading something

17:56

that might be more abstract

17:58

or more metaphoric. But I also think. about

18:00

the fact that like it's

18:02

easy to think of metaphors as being only

18:05

in the abstract. Like literally that's

18:07

the stuff of poetry, right? Like, um,

18:10

but there's so many ways where I read this book

18:12

and I'm reminded that metaphors are important

18:16

real life things. Um,

18:18

there's a, there's a, a little

18:20

part in the essay you have about mangoes

18:23

where you write that there's a tradition in

18:27

some parts of India where farmers

18:30

who are friends will intertwine

18:32

mango trees. Yeah. Tell

18:34

us about that. Oh

18:37

my gosh. Well, you know, I mean, I think so

18:40

all my essay, I will just back up just for a

18:42

little bit in my poems and my essays. I always start,

18:44

and I hear you for sure. I

18:46

hear that a lot and you're not the

18:48

only one. But if I sing poetry and

18:50

you know, it's a little bit either more

18:52

difficult or it's not my normal like leisure

18:54

reading activities. So I get it. That's totally

18:56

legit. I love it. I mean, I want

18:58

to say I love it, but it's like, you know, it's like, you know, you

19:00

love it in the way that you love

19:03

a great workout. But anyway, absolutely. Uh,

19:07

and you keep coming back, you know, that's the, that's the

19:09

key. As long as you keep coming back, you know, um,

19:13

I would say that my poems

19:15

and essays start with an image

19:17

first, not like a lesson or not like even,

19:19

um, a mood, even it

19:22

really starts with that image. So,

19:24

um, I, I kind

19:26

of, because for me, I can't not

19:28

think of mangoes without, I mean,

19:30

I, since I was, you know, six

19:32

and was even cognizant of hearing my

19:35

parents' voices raised, but also

19:38

ingest and there's playfulness. And it was, I

19:40

mean, I saw them raise,

19:43

I heard them raise their voices, but I also

19:45

could hear them laughing. So it was this kind

19:47

of, I don't know. It's

19:49

just this really sweet, warm memory that I

19:51

have. If I'm thinking, what is my first

19:53

memories of my parents' voices? It

19:55

is actually them arguing about which mangoes are

19:57

the sweetest. I mean, I kid you not.

20:00

Like it's not like I don't I don't remember

20:02

a time where they weren't doing this. So it's

20:04

my whole life and I'm almost 50 So

20:06

you do the math and I've heard this Non-stop

20:09

growing up. So it was

20:11

never a moment like ooh, I'm worried about my

20:13

parents Separating because

20:16

of this but but more

20:18

of just like how do

20:20

they never tire of this banter? And

20:23

there's never an agreement. There's never a

20:26

There's never a like oh I

20:29

beg your pardon you're right. There's

20:31

no acquiescence ever and it's yeah Yeah,

20:33

never ceases to you entertain them and then

20:35

thus the whole family is entertained I don't

20:38

know how or why this is the case

20:41

and I won't pretend to know but I

20:44

You know that this we're talking about it

20:46

again the the word essay means to try

20:49

So all I'm doing is just trying to see How

20:53

does how did you people

20:57

Find this kind of joy and delight

20:59

of So

21:02

arguing and even seeing

21:04

how in that metaphor of

21:07

how mangos are married

21:09

to each other and you know graft

21:11

it and and how they take on

21:13

new flavors with Depending

21:16

on the soil and the acidity of the soil.

21:18

It becomes like almost a completely

21:20

new surprise a variety, you know that kind of

21:22

thing and This may

21:24

be too heavy-handed and I didn't put this in

21:26

the essay, but just talking it out now. It's

21:29

almost like you Your

21:31

surroundings affect you but it so often

21:33

in food writing. It's it's almost like

21:37

Or maybe writing in general. It's almost like a bad

21:39

thing. Like here's the trauma I endured Or

21:42

here's what I overcame, but now I'm

21:45

a stronger person What

21:47

I hope that the reader comes

21:49

away with this like look at how the

21:51

mango has endured and changed and In

21:54

some many real tangible cases.

21:56

Look how delicious has become more

21:59

and more more varieties based on

22:01

what kind of soil it grew in and

22:03

how it was tended and things like that

22:05

and to the point where my

22:08

parents literally never get

22:10

old. They've celebrated their 50th wedding

22:12

anniversary and it just doesn't,

22:14

there's no end in sight of who's going

22:17

to have the sweetest mango. Who can

22:19

finally agree that the sweetest mango is

22:21

their own country's version, you know? So

22:25

that's a big answer but it's because

22:27

there's no set kind of answer

22:30

to that. That's my essay in the

22:32

book. It's me just trying to make

22:34

sense of their kind of

22:36

dorkiness, you know?

22:38

And it's also, it's

22:41

a sense of, it's a

22:43

sense of, gosh, I miss them so

22:45

much. It's an absolute cliche, you know? I mean,

22:48

especially since the pandemic when I couldn't usually,

22:50

I see them about four or five times

22:52

a year and when I couldn't

22:54

see them all of a sudden, I just was

22:56

like, I just want to kind

22:59

of make my odes to them while they're here

23:01

on this planet and the mango effort was one

23:03

way to do that. I

23:05

love that. Well, let me end

23:07

with this final question. These

23:12

are amazing questions, by the way. I just

23:14

have to give a shout out to these

23:16

questions. None of this like hot takes on

23:18

the latest Taylor Swift album. This is great.

23:20

We can talk about Kendrick and Drake now.

23:25

I'll end on this and we don't

23:27

have to have your parents listen to this part, but which

23:30

to you are the most mangoes? Oh

23:33

my gosh. Well, I

23:36

mean, oh man, Frances, you're

23:38

gonna, I know, I do have an answer, but

23:40

I just don't want there to be a civil

23:42

war within the Nizuka Matata household now. All right,

23:45

I'm gonna just say it because it's,

23:47

you know, I'm wearing, for the listeners

23:49

who can't see, I'm wearing a shirt

23:51

that highlights the Philippine mango, but truthfully

23:53

the answer, the sweetest mango that

23:56

I've ever tasted is The

23:58

Alfonso mango and that is from. The

24:00

and the Syrian mega yeah my of

24:02

man mixing of mango the king and

24:04

named as I am so sorry about

24:06

that a stress I gotta be on.

24:10

His new Alfonso mean that he said so

24:13

I'm reading Philippines this them. With

24:15

the blues the same. a good loser seen

24:17

her heart lies be offline mode sneeze at

24:20

me Said it meant. That

24:22

I. Gotta I gotta keep it real as

24:25

I'm just really is over the blind taste test.

24:27

the nice he had my husband is blind taste

24:29

test so I wouldn't you know any of this

24:31

three out of the times that says alpha the

24:33

mango. So. Dang it as

24:35

oh man than the audience that

24:38

financial reasons for this is it

24:40

good. Or

24:43

me this has been such a delay and you

24:45

know what? I got my first of on some

24:47

anger the other day that waiting for me at

24:49

home So I'm going to end this period of

24:51

a home and tasted i excited out of my

24:54

north and drill or he says. He misses

24:56

the senses you're only supposed. To. Tell

24:58

you they're the same. Thank you.

25:03

Amy as who com a tattoo is the

25:05

author. As

25:14

professional my are honestly few people

25:16

are. Humor is that it's you

25:18

and you'd have to be truly

25:21

iconic. The book editor Judith, was

25:23

the person who brought Sylvia Plath

25:25

poetry to America. who is John

25:27

Updike editor and who convinced her

25:29

bosses to publish Diary of a

25:31

Girl Named and Frank For. The

25:33

reason we're talking about her today

25:36

is because she also personally transformed

25:38

the cookbook industry and our country

25:40

first by publishing an unknown home

25:42

cook name's Julia Child. And

25:44

then a litany of coronary superheroes

25:47

and Cruz and the Louis Marcela

25:49

Hassan Claudia wrote in Mater Joffrey

25:51

and many, many more. To the

25:53

end of her life, she struck

25:55

up a friendship with a brilliant

25:57

young Phd student and Sir Frank.

26:00

Would later become the author of

26:02

the definitive and You Slice. It

26:05

called the editor how publishing

26:07

legend Judith Jones she's Culture

26:10

in America. Hey

26:12

Sarah! great see you. Hi

26:14

Francis! Such a pleasure to be back. Hey

26:17

congratulations on the book! I know you

26:19

have a working on this. I

26:22

mean some way since like the day you first

26:24

met To Jones over ten years ago. so you

26:26

have is a real achievement. I have been so

26:28

excited to see it and now I'm so glad

26:31

to get to read it. Thank.

26:33

You so much. So

26:35

let's start Actually, in the beginning of things

26:38

I'm toast a little bit about how to

26:40

to screw up and I'm really curious what

26:42

her food life was like. Is

26:44

suited. It was born in Nineteen,

26:47

twenty four immense Ten, and. York

26:49

City and she grew up sort of

26:51

straddling two worlds. See her mother

26:53

who was quite buttoned up very strict

26:55

am in judas description, a bit of

26:58

a social climber who really wanted to

27:00

get the family social status, abdomen and

27:02

a certain level of high visibility an

27:04

and a real performance of class and

27:06

a father who is from an old

27:08

Vermont family who really wanted to fly

27:11

below the radar, have a good place

27:13

and for him that men are very

27:15

quiet life and shoot it's a sort.

27:17

Of stretch between these two. Worlds growing up

27:19

in the Nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. And

27:21

then there was a really powerful Third Presents

27:24

and her house which was the families need

27:26

ease who came from Barbados originally from and

27:28

Judas who is very interested and in eating

27:30

from a young age but had been told

27:33

by her mother that food with not something

27:35

you talked about or took pleasure in that

27:37

that was a vulgar. as of older a

27:39

Sex and Judith or it's Judith would sneak

27:42

into the kitchen after school and hang out

27:44

with eighty and they would put together some

27:46

time Students would help out greeting cheese or.

27:48

Draining pasta and and also listen to

27:51

eat his stories. And so from a

27:53

very early age she really drew together

27:55

her interest and both eating and the

27:58

pleasure that comes from it. Fucking

28:00

And stories about food that emerged when

28:02

people act together in the kitchen. Okay

28:05

said use a literary term that

28:08

is foreshadowing indeed to the what

28:10

spurred her interest in literature and

28:12

what letter to publishing. A

28:16

Christian, she grew up in a pretty

28:18

religious family and so her earliest exposure

28:20

to stories and she was a pretty

28:22

sickly child this than one one I'm

28:25

in bed and reading children's books but

28:27

also reading scripture. So she found a

28:29

lot of time of the bible as

28:31

an and she was really moved by

28:33

the language in the bible and also

28:36

an idea of transcendence and the have

28:38

first eleven literature with poetry soon as

28:40

really drawn to a form that was

28:42

distilled. that's and that took seriously the

28:44

beauty of language, the precision. Of Language

28:47

and tried to bring human experience a

28:49

cell human experience and down onto the

28:51

page. And and so it was her

28:53

it with her love of poetry. actually,

28:55

that brought her to Bennington College in

28:57

the early nineteen forties, which at the

29:00

time had hired a lot of America

29:02

foremost working writers to teach. They were

29:04

sort of at the cutting edge of

29:06

liberal politics, and and Judith knew. That

29:08

it with the please she could kind of escape from

29:10

others heavy. Hand and as idea that she

29:13

was being groomed, Judith had been groomed

29:15

to be a society life and she

29:17

knew she wanted something more than that

29:19

for herself and that that literature was

29:21

her gateway their lousy. Without banning ten

29:23

she studied under a couple of really

29:25

influential poets of the time I'm one

29:27

of whom with the It or refugee

29:29

who ended up. Becoming both her mentor

29:32

and her first love. Them

29:34

and during her very very first semester

29:36

at Bending Ten, the students they're all

29:38

were released for a long recess in

29:40

the wintertime. This was during World War

29:43

Two and heating the campus was very,

29:45

very expensive at the time, and so,

29:47

both as part of the war effort

29:49

and to save money, Bennington sent the

29:52

students off into the world. for

29:54

prolonged winter resets with strict instructions to

29:56

go do something useful that themselves they

29:58

were to travel or get work experience,

30:01

but we would now call an internship.

30:03

And Judith's very first internship through a

30:05

family connection, again, she came from a

30:07

pretty well-connected white family in New York

30:09

City, was at Double Day Publishing House

30:12

in New York City. At 17 years

30:14

old, per her description, she was

30:16

sort of tossed into the ring, and

30:19

she was given manuscripts to edit without any

30:21

instruction. She was told that they needed work,

30:23

she didn't know what kind of work. And

30:26

so at 17 years old, using

30:28

her particular blend of intellect,

30:31

curiosity, intuition, and chutzpah,

30:34

she started marking up manuscripts, which then went right

30:36

back to high-profile authors. This was at a time

30:38

when a lot of the staff was off at

30:40

war, and Double Day was desperate for editors to

30:43

step in. They were at the time one of

30:45

the largest publishing houses in the world. And

30:47

so that was her very first taste of publishing. I

30:50

love hearing that because I want to, in

30:53

my head, the old days of publishing, everyone was

30:55

very serious. I'm like, we don't do that. We

30:58

don't do that now. No. We don't win

31:00

a full manuscript at a 15-year-old, and we were like, here, go for

31:02

it. Okay, 7 to 7, please. Sure.

31:07

More with Sarah Franklin, author of The Editor,

31:09

in just a minute. Stick around.

31:11

I'm Francis Lam, and this is The

31:13

Splendid Table from APM. My

31:21

name is Lee Hawkins. I've

31:23

been a journalist for over 25 years. On

31:26

my new podcast, What Happened in

31:28

Alabama? I get answers to some

31:30

of the hardest questions about how

31:32

things came to be for many

31:35

Black Americans, and the truth that

31:37

must come before any reconciliation can

31:39

happen. I investigate my

31:41

family history, my upbringing in

31:43

Minnesota, and my father's painful

31:45

nightmares about growing up in

31:47

Alabama. What Happened in

31:50

Alabama? Is a new series confronting

31:52

the cycles of trauma for

31:54

myself, my family, and for many

31:56

Black Americans. Listen now. Hey

32:09

everyone, it's Rima Khres, host of This

32:11

is Uncomfortable. If you're looking for some

32:13

good recommendations on books to read, well

32:15

you should join This is Uncomfortable's Summer

32:17

Book Club. Every other

32:19

week in our newsletter, we'll share a new

32:22

book that'll make you rethink your relationship to

32:24

money, class, and work, while also

32:26

featuring an interview with the author or an expert

32:28

on the topic. Plus, when you

32:30

join, you'll be entered in a giveaway where you

32:32

can win some This is Uncomfortable merch. Be

32:35

sure to check it out. Sign up

32:37

today at marketplace.org slash book

32:39

club. I'm

32:45

Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks

32:47

and eaters. We're talking to the

32:49

author Sarah Franklin about her book, The Editor, about

32:51

the legacy of Judas Jones, who you can say

32:54

did more to change food culture in America

32:56

than just about anyone. I'll be back

32:58

to move with her. Okay,

33:00

so let's fast forward like 15, 16, 17 years or

33:02

something like that. Judas

33:06

is now in her mid 30s, and

33:08

she's at Knopf, which is this very

33:10

high-end, very literary publishing house. She

33:13

famously brought Sylvia Plath's first book

33:15

to the United States. She

33:17

was John Updike's editor, you know, serious

33:20

literary stuff. And

33:22

then she made this move to take her list, that's

33:24

what we call in their business instead of like a portfolio, like

33:27

it's our list in a new direction.

33:31

And we actually had Judas on our show back in I

33:33

think 2006 or 2007. She

33:35

talked about that. I want to play a little clip of what

33:37

she said. When

33:40

this huge Tom on French cooking landed

33:42

on my desk, it

33:44

was like an answer to my prayers,

33:46

whereas the editors up

33:49

at Houghton Mifflin and Boston said

33:51

Mrs. Child, no American woman

33:53

wants to know that much about

33:55

French cooking. Well, I

33:57

did, and then we're wrong. So

34:00

Mrs. Child, of course, is Julia

34:02

Child. Julia Child, the one and

34:04

only. Do you know this story?

34:07

Oh, so well. And I

34:09

love listening to Judith do that imitation

34:12

of the snobs of a Houghton-Mifflin that's so

34:14

characteristic of her. Yes,

34:16

I know this story very well. So 1959, Judith

34:18

had been an editor, a junior editor at

34:22

Knopf for two years at the time. She

34:24

was hired by Blanche Knopf, who was the

34:26

co-founder of the publishing house. And

34:29

at the time she was hired, Judith was

34:31

only the second woman to work outside the

34:33

secretarial pool at Knopf. She

34:35

really had a lot of ambition for herself at

34:37

the time when she began there, but she had

34:39

been hired as an assistant and she wasn't acquiring

34:41

books on her own. She wasn't finding her own

34:43

authors yet. She was assigned

34:46

to John Updike, who had, as you mentioned, Francis

34:48

taken a shine to her in the hallway, actually,

34:50

and he needed a new editor at Knopf and

34:52

he picked her out of the hallway and said to Alfred

34:54

Knopf, I want her, what about her? That's

34:56

how they got matched up. Sylvia

34:59

Plath was someone that Judith had kind

35:01

of been tracking, but also Knopf had

35:03

had her eye on, and

35:06

because they knew Judith knew poetry, they handed

35:08

her Sylvia Plath. The way Julia

35:10

Child happened is actually quite similar. So

35:13

Houghton Mifflin had rejected the manuscript that

35:15

became Mastering the Art of French Cooking,

35:17

the book we all know and love,

35:19

the worldwide classic at this point, after

35:22

it had been under contract there.

35:24

They had sent the manuscript back

35:27

to Julia Child and

35:29

her two co-authors, Louise Zett, Bertolt and Simone

35:31

Beck, for revision. They felt it was far

35:33

too complicated and long for any American home

35:35

cook to use it, let alone buy it

35:37

in the first place. And

35:39

so that team of writers had

35:41

gone through a whole intensive round of

35:43

revision, and then Houghton Mifflin rejected it

35:45

again. That's the moment Judith is referring

35:47

to in that clip. And they

35:50

canceled the contract. Avis

35:52

DeVoto, who was a friend of Alfred

35:54

and Blanche Knopf, was living in Cambridge,

35:56

Massachusetts at the time. And

35:58

she had... by letter taking

36:00

up a friendship with Julia Child. There's sort

36:02

of an interesting backstory there that I outline

36:04

in the book, but they knew one another

36:07

a little bit. And she too, Avis de

36:09

Boto believed this book had legs and that

36:11

there really could be a tremendous audience for

36:13

it in the United States. So

36:15

she forwarded it on to Knopf. And

36:17

once it got to Knopf, it landed at William

36:19

Koshland's desk. He was one of the sort

36:21

of executives who had a finger in every

36:23

book. And he brought it to Judith. He

36:26

knew that she had lived in Paris for three years in

36:28

the late 1940s and early 50s. He

36:30

knew that she loved to cook. And he

36:32

thought that maybe she could take a look at it

36:34

and probably reject it. He was really bringing it

36:36

to her just to sort of get a formal stamp

36:38

of rejection on it. And it

36:41

was 750 pages when it landed on her desk. I

36:45

mean, can you imagine, right? Not an

36:47

email file, but paper, this big on

36:49

her desk. And I

36:51

imagine the sort of air of mischief that he was like,

36:53

oh, your turn with this space, take

36:55

a look. And she was

36:58

very curious. She had been looking for a

37:00

French cookbook that would help her replicate the

37:02

dishes that she had learned to love in

37:04

Paris and the kinds of dishes that she

37:06

was experimenting with with her husband while

37:09

she lived there. And she had just come

37:11

up dry when she came back to the States in 1951. She

37:15

was finding books that assumed a

37:17

great deal of skill from home

37:19

cooks or where the instructions

37:21

were so vague that you were just bound

37:23

to fail. If you didn't have the skill

37:25

and the practice and the intuition or the

37:27

formal training, you were going to flop if

37:29

you tried to cook these recipes. She

37:32

was looking for something that could teach her and she

37:34

knew that there were other people. I should say she

37:36

intuited and she was right as it turned out that

37:39

there were other Americans who were like her who

37:41

would also want to learn how to

37:43

replicate French dishes at home. So

37:46

she began taking pieces of Julia Child's

37:48

manuscript home and cooking from them. And

37:50

the first one was both Bourguignon and

37:53

Judith and her husband cooked it in their kitchen,

37:55

in their apartment in New York. And

37:57

as she said it, it was the best. So, Bourguignon,

37:59

we... ever had. You know, the instructions

38:01

were so thorough. They were so precise.

38:03

They were so well broken down for

38:06

a home cook of any level that

38:08

you were going to succeed with

38:10

these recipes if you followed them as they were

38:12

written. And Judith just felt like this is

38:14

the book I've been waiting for. And she

38:17

really had a hunch that it could change things

38:19

for American home cooks. Now it

38:21

was a very bold thing at a literary

38:23

publishing house like Knopf to try to push

38:25

a cookbook through. They were not publishing cookbooks.

38:27

Yeah, and they were famously,

38:30

I mean, to this day, their reputation is

38:33

extremely literary, extremely intellectual,

38:35

very high end. Funny

38:38

enough, they also published Fifty Shades of Grey, which is

38:41

like the best-selling book of all time. It's like the

38:43

Bible and the Fifty Shades of Grey, but that's a

38:46

different story. But yeah, so

38:48

I was curious about that. She must have also thought it

38:50

was kind of a reputational

38:52

risk. She's an assistant editor. She's not

38:55

high up on the food chain yet. And

38:58

for her to say, we have to

39:00

publish this massive cookbook, like did she

39:02

also feel like she's maybe risking her

39:04

own reputation a little bit? You

39:07

know, knowing Judith, as I did at the end of

39:10

her life, I think she knew

39:12

exactly what was at stake. And also by

39:14

that point, she had tried on

39:16

many things in her life already. I

39:18

think she had a sense that there wasn't that

39:20

much to lose, right? That if she couldn't find

39:23

a way to work in publishing that was interesting

39:25

to her, she probably wouldn't have stayed at all.

39:27

And so in a way, I think she was

39:29

testing the waters here. She did a

39:32

very brilliant thing. She formed an

39:34

alliance with a much more senior editor, a

39:36

guy named Angus Cameron, who had

39:38

previously been at Bob's Maryland. He had published

39:41

The Joy of Cooking, the original edition of The

39:43

Joy of Cooking, just tremendous success. And

39:45

so Judith knew that he knew about cookbooks.

39:47

He understood what would make them succeed and

39:49

what could make them fail. He was known

39:51

as a really brilliant

39:53

publisher. And he came to Knopf

39:57

in 1959. He also loved to cook and eat. And Judith took him out

39:59

to lunch and said, Well, you look at this book and

40:01

let me know what you think. She was sort of

40:03

checking her instinct with him. He

40:05

too thought it was remarkable. And

40:08

because he was so influential and she

40:10

was so in many ways invisible at

40:12

Knopf, so invisible she was not allowed

40:15

to attend editorial meetings yet. She was

40:17

both too young and too much a woman.

40:20

She had him pitch the book on

40:22

her behalf. And so it

40:24

was he that actually brought the manuscript and

40:26

his reader's report into the editorial

40:29

meeting and really sang its

40:32

praises. And then said to the

40:34

Knopfs, we've got to publish this. I think it

40:36

could be a remarkable book. He was also very

40:38

clear though that Judith should be the one to

40:40

do it. He understood that she had the energy

40:42

for it. She had the interest in it. She

40:44

was gonna cook from it. So she was really

40:46

gonna make sure that those recipes worked. And

40:48

lo and behold, Alfred Knopf decided

40:51

to give Mrs. Jones a

40:53

chance as he said, as condescending as that

40:55

sounds. And quickly, Judith

40:57

wrote to Julia Child and said, we're so

40:59

delighted to accept this manuscript and they were

41:01

off to the races. That's

41:03

amazing. And then obviously

41:05

that book comes out very famously. And

41:10

from the vantage of where I sit today, I,

41:13

seeing all of Judith's career in

41:16

retrospect and knowing her legacy, I think

41:18

of her as the person who started

41:21

with Julia Child, but then

41:23

went on to publish pretty much every,

41:26

iconic voice in American cooking. Like

41:29

if you think about Madhajafri,

41:33

Claudia Rodin, Marcella Hazan,

41:35

Edna Lewis, you know, who you and I

41:37

have talked about many, many times, someone

41:40

I adore greatly. You know, she

41:43

almost, it seemed like had this mission of like, she

41:46

was trying to find an amazing

41:48

writer for every great cuisine in the

41:51

world and published the iconic cookbook on

41:53

it. And she mostly succeeded. I

41:56

Wanna play another clip of when we had her on the

41:58

show years ago. Let's listen to this. That really quickly.

42:01

What? I found was that

42:03

very often the voice. Would

42:06

be done of somebody who. Was abruptly.

42:09

Driven. From. The

42:11

home that childhood and longed for

42:13

those memories as taste to reconnect

42:16

with the past. And that's what

42:18

happened to Claudia rather than. Her

42:21

family was a a supporting families

42:24

living in Cairo. She had three

42:26

different grandparents came from Aleppo and

42:28

abrupt place they had to leave

42:31

it so she started trying to

42:33

reconnect with family and friends. Went

42:35

to the British Museum's poured over

42:38

the whole history of Has Foods

42:40

and cannabis as really wonderful loving

42:42

book. Oh a book of Middle

42:45

Eastern food and it really did

42:47

to tend to marathon because little

42:49

by little we became familiar. With

42:52

says ingredients and they they became

42:54

a part of of our culture.

42:56

And that's a wonderful thing about

42:59

America. Two weeks. We. Don't

43:01

hang on to a single

43:03

pass tradition, but we're We're

43:05

so open to new tests.

43:08

And love that clap isn't agree. Yeah

43:11

yeah I mean one of the things that

43:13

struck me listening to that listen to the

43:15

specificity of what she points out and her

43:17

description of playwright and what an of what

43:19

a consummate editor right system talking about where

43:22

the parents are from, where the grandparents are

43:24

from, where Claudia Road ended her research he

43:26

knew says framing the story so that you

43:28

can get specific so that you can get

43:30

granular which is of course the secret to

43:33

any good story. Ray it's like the

43:35

big picture and a little picture and

43:37

moving moving the to do some bizarre

43:39

in big picture for judas. Did.

43:42

See. Know that she

43:44

was changing American culture with her cookbooks,

43:46

but I don't think that's overstating it

43:48

because circles are not seen as literature,

43:51

right? Ice It was not polite. It

43:53

was not. It was not high class

43:55

that talk about food and see. Book.

43:58

By book was clean. In the

44:00

groundwork for a culture that like actually understood food

44:02

and with series their food and eventually years later

44:05

we would see food as entertainment and as culture.

44:08

And yeah, you know when I asked

44:10

her in two thousand and thirteen? Is.

44:13

She thought she was on a mission, let

44:15

her cook, but she said absolutely not and

44:17

if she completely resist and. An

44:19

end least he described it was that. When

44:22

someone or some story struck her as

44:24

interesting enough, that's when she decided to

44:26

do a book that it wasn't a

44:28

kind of premeditated mission that she had

44:31

in mind, but the right person had

44:33

to come along to be the conduit.

44:35

Or that dairy. And if you

44:37

think about Julia Child and her

44:39

personality, if you think about Madhur

44:42

Jaffrey and her incredible exuberance, right

44:44

the the vibrancy. Of her cooking and

44:46

her personality starts on actor. Famous actor

44:48

at that point and and a Lewis's

44:50

grace her presence in New York City.

44:52

And if you're talking about people who

44:54

had tremendous singularity in who they were

44:56

and in their authorial voice and also

44:58

in their cooking so juice was not

45:00

going to rush to to find somebody

45:02

to sell slot, she was gonna wait

45:04

until the right person came along and

45:06

I think in some ways that he

45:08

senses part of what. meet her Very

45:10

good at it or. Their.

45:14

Own. For the about other people know when to wonder

45:16

what kind of a tick tock profiles of Herbert know.

45:21

This litter January might be on six hundred

45:23

and two elderly Laviolette would own tic toc

45:25

if I'm just felt like she wanted to

45:28

have. Okay, So I'm on as

45:30

this one. One more question. Are.

45:33

You. Obviously a door to this and

45:35

you've written a book about her, you

45:38

do. You adore her as a person

45:40

and her some? Yeah, just tremendous interest

45:42

and researching every possible thing he said.

45:45

her. By

45:47

think part of your adoration shows as a

45:49

seriousness and how you think about her. She's

45:51

not just oh this friend you made and

45:53

I get a writer or less story. You

45:55

have your critique suffer as well. as

45:58

you know i don't speak

46:00

ill of her, but you see her

46:02

human imperfections. And you

46:04

wrote that, you know, one of her gifts as an

46:06

editor was how invisible she

46:08

was, right? Like the point is you

46:11

don't read a Judith Jones book and know it's a Judith Jones

46:13

book. It's not supposed to sound like her. But

46:16

you also said that she did sometimes have

46:18

a tendency to mute or

46:22

maybe dilute. I'm not sure if the wording you use,

46:24

so forgive me, but some of her authors have called

46:26

her a little bit. I think that's

46:28

right. How did you come to understand her

46:30

work differently than she did? Well, you

46:35

know, Judith and I had more than a 60-year

46:37

age gap between us, so I think that's an

46:39

important thing to think about is she was

46:41

doing her work in real time and living her

46:43

a very different period of American culture

46:46

than the one that I was shaped by and

46:48

am living and writing in. So that's one important

46:50

component of it. But something

46:52

that really struck me, and this

46:54

was after Judith's death, after my

46:57

conversations with her, which

46:59

was she really put

47:02

it on her authors to

47:04

make themselves legible to a

47:06

largely white, largely very affluent

47:08

American readership rather than asking

47:10

that readership to meet those

47:13

authors in their particular

47:15

context. And, you know,

47:17

I think there's a way in which that reads as

47:20

quite dated here in

47:22

2024, which it feels like it is

47:24

centering whiteness, which it certainly was. It

47:26

was exoticizing those authors of color in

47:30

ways that I think now I would

47:32

hope that she would do differently and perhaps do

47:34

better, that she might ask the

47:36

audience to come a little closer to

47:39

the authors and let the authors be

47:41

exactly who they were in their own

47:43

context and explain themselves on their own

47:45

terms. And so

47:48

I think it's really important to always

47:50

be reading her work, whether it

47:52

was cookbooks or poetry or fiction or nonfiction,

47:55

through the time and place that formed it, but

47:57

also with an important critical lens.

48:00

Which is that at she did not

48:02

live and work in a diverse culture.

48:04

Publishing was lily white at the time

48:06

and the truth is even though she

48:08

had some terrifically did it had some

48:10

terrifically iconic authors who works who are

48:12

authors of colors. Most of her authors

48:15

were wiped across the board. Legacy look

48:17

at all the books that she added

48:19

it and that became her reality. That

48:21

was her normal. My thought was her

48:23

baseline in a way that I think

48:25

to me feels and you know I

48:27

don't want to be. You're right. I

48:29

try not to be on planes about

48:31

it that I think to ignore it

48:34

would be to suggest that she was

48:36

somehow more worldly are more open than

48:38

she was. She was game and she

48:40

was curious, but she was also limited

48:42

by the world view and the conditions

48:44

and am culture that seats her. There.

48:48

But. Still, even without robots to have a

48:50

legacy that I think. Was.

48:53

Were writing the story of the past in

48:55

the future you know with a So see

48:57

how her work did manage to create a

48:59

legacy that again to my mind. Really?

49:02

The groundwork for where we are today and

49:04

the more sort of inclusive, more curious, more

49:06

open. Present and hopefully

49:09

even wearing suits. Her. It

49:11

was a huge step forward. I mean, if

49:13

you think about the books of our current

49:15

that she was putting out the cutbacks in

49:17

the Nineteen seventies a particular supply The Road

49:19

and Madhur Jaffrey, Anna Louis alone If you

49:22

leave it just at those three nights, the

49:24

sort of brilliance of those three books, together

49:26

with the Judith was putting politics directly in

49:28

front of whom. ever picked up that cookbook

49:30

units, they might not have been willing to

49:33

engage in the kind of capital p. Politics.

49:35

Of whatever that person was saying are the conditions

49:38

from which there cuisines were born. You and I

49:40

francis have talked about this with regard to and

49:42

Lewis. But he knows Judith was

49:44

creating a kind of palatable. way of

49:46

introducing unpopular politics will largely white audience

49:48

and so in a kind of brilliant

49:50

much in the way that she was

49:53

able to push the cookbook through at

49:55

a place like come off as as

49:57

he was able to get people and

49:59

cultures and i ideas in

50:01

front of what otherwise might have been

50:03

a fairly closed-minded audience, right? Because

50:06

food is delicious and pleasurable and by the time

50:08

you've cooked an Eloisa spoon bread or by the

50:10

time you've made a Mother

50:12

Jaffrey's doll, you have fallen in love in

50:14

a way that might make you more open

50:16

to seeing the person as a human. Whereas

50:19

if you just put their demographics on paper

50:21

in front of that very same audience, they

50:24

may have responded with a closed mind. And

50:26

I think that that is something that cookbooks

50:28

still do today, that food is culture still

50:31

does today. It kind of gets people where

50:33

it feels good and that's

50:35

a way of changing hearts and minds. We

50:37

can hope for it anyway. We can hope for

50:39

it. Well, Sarah, you know,

50:41

they say never meet your heroes, but I'm glad you

50:43

did. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm so

50:46

glad to. Thank you for having me back, Frances. It's

50:48

been a pleasure. Sarah

50:50

Franklin is author of The Editor,

50:52

a publishing legend, Jewish Jones shaped

50:54

culture in America. Well,

50:57

that is our show for this week. Thank you so

50:59

much for listening. And I'll see you next

51:03

week. APM

51:06

Studios are run by Tundra Cavati and Joanne

51:08

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51:38

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51:40

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