>> Perhaps it can be said that poet essayist novelist and Short-story writer Crystal Wilkinson is living her best life.

The award-winning literary giant is rising even higher with her latest book praise Song for The Kitchen goes.

We hope you'll explore the inspiration of this artful culinary memoir with author Crystal Wilkinson.

Now on Connections.

♪ ♪ Thank you so much for joining us today.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Now as the kids say these days, Crystal Wilkinson is that Girl C is dead setting across the country.

Regaling bookstore audiences with conversations about her new book praise song for the Kitchen Goce so many accolades and overdue recognition is have come her way lately.

And we're so glad she's here to tell us all about them.

Her muse for this artful and beautiful collection of memories, history and southern dishes that make this a one of a kind coffee table book that will inspire the cook in you.

And I believe the intro short because I want to just hear everything from you.

Crystal Wilkinson, thank you for being, you know, thank you for having.

You know, you're one of my favorite guests.

I can say this now because connections will be ending its run at the end of May or June.

And I am being very intentional about whom I have on the And so I am so glad to connect with you.

And to really be a fan as as someone who's supposed to be objective and you know, emote or refuse over folks.

I just have to say how proud I am of you.

Thank you.

And I honor your work is amazing.

Well, it's an honor.

It's a my work is good because your work is great, right?

And being able to sit with this with this book.

I told you before we started taping, I hope I can make it through this interview because it evokes so many memories and regret actually.

But I want to just start hear you say that this is a not a book of the head b*** of the Heart and the beauty of your storytelling always has been that you are so reflective of your people right of their voice of their experiences.

I want to show a video clip because this book touched me.

But I'm not the only one.

There's a famous chef.

Who also it touched.

As well.

Watch this.

>> Chris, do.

Your book because everything I see lines.

It has been well, it is made me miss my grandmother, my grandfather.

I wonder where the pictures Feeling like on the table.

Late Edition.

♪ This is a must read.

>> Couldn't say it better myself.

And and that's coming from Carla Hall.

Yeah, we know famous TV personality model.

It's been on the food network, all kinds of places.

And it's been in Lexington before doing some food demonstrations.

She knows a good cook book when she sees it.

But this is more that a cookbook man brought bars what she says and you get when you hear that kind of compliment coming from that level of personality, how does that strike you I was overwhelmed even now if you replay it back, I did know you're going to play and it >> tears to my eyes because she has read so many books.

So many food books.

She know so many chefs, you could tell that she was And when she said thank you and better, put her hand close to her heart.

I just I just started crying.

Yeah.

That's the word of gratitude, really.

And you've shared with me a little bit before we started taping that that kind of experience is what you're saying.

When you talk about your book that people are emotional and they are, you know, this hearkens back to their childhoods and >> regrets, as I said, or maybe just strong memories.

Why do you think it is struck such a chord?

Well, I think it's because we all have kitchen ghost.

>> You know, and we all have.

Family.

We all have matriarchs that were missing.

And food is food is for our bellies.

But food is also for our hearts.

You know, we.

We have food is the great unifier.

it's a region.

Its culture.

You know, it's it's character in both fiction and non-fiction like it's it's who it defines who we are many times.

That's why you have all those those regional food fights.

I've got those people who say.

>> What don't put sugar in the >> Well, you say that you don't exactly remember how old you were when you started cooking.

>> Do you do you remember about the you know, I think about but 14 you've written that you're pretty good in the action.

You could burn as we used to say, going up, you know, I could put your foot in some stuff.

Yeah, I don't remember when I started.

But I know I was cooking by the time I was 10 and I do remember being about 4 years old in standing.

>> Up in the chair to people over into the pots like I had this thing where I wanted to see the bottom of the pot and granny would just KET doing what she was doing and let me stand in the chair and out people over into the pot because I wanted to see not just the pot from a distance behind a seat.

In fact, it ensures going on the grandmother was a big influence and your life.

You lived with Your mother battled mental illness.

Yes, and you live with your grandmother and you talk about her and at low who will get to in a moment.

That's what we're saying right now.

Right?

I love the and Loic Anglo.

Haha got to go back to my Tennessee roots day because that's what we used to say.

I got to Kentucky Anyssa onto isn't all that >> and this woman right here that we're seeing on the screen.

How important issue you call her very central figure in this work.

Yeah, and I will start crime may cause she's been she's been sick >> it even though she was 60 came out to to my van read from the book so I Lo was like my other mother.

I basically had 3 mothers ahead.

The mother who gave birth to me.

My grandmother raised me with my mother.

But every summer.

Halo head 3 boys and 3 girls.

And I was her 7th every summer.

But first, cousins are like my brothers and Yeah.

That's how close.

Yeah.

Which she also part of this culinary journey to with you.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, I went to visit her just a couple of days ago and we were talking about this that.

She told me some things that didn't know.

I didn't realize that my she got married very young and my grandmother, you know, she and my uncle lived in in the house with granting grand a day and my grandmother taught her how to cook.

She said she didn't know how to cook until she got married and moved into.

Now with her husband.

You has been my uncle moved into the house with granting granted and she talked about how nurturing and sweet my grandmother was because that's the expectation that women know how to cook for their husbands.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've read to you are you've heard you say this hurts in your book where you talk about the kitchen being a place of And so often I'll just speak from my personal experience.

When I think of the time that my grandmother spent in the kitchen toiling for groups end all of these different places and people.

I looked at it is and I looked at is on the U.S. to rely questioning of power.

Yeah.

But you flip that on its head.

Yeah.

I mean, I think of course, there were times when it was that because they were subservient in those household.

But when you look at it, they were also in powerful positions like what other power is there, then you have to rely on someone else.

Are you do?

You might have to.

But to do rely on someone else.

>> To provide your meals.

And so you're sustenance, Was this woman who was in in the kitchen?

Making those meals?

What she even with instruction like if you said you wanted whatever, meatloaf at night it was that woman who decided what kind of meat loaf you had, that quality of the food was going to be.

>> And then at home, the kitchen was like the center of the universe, right?

It was like you've got your hair done in the sense that there was Bob.

We was cited the Bible verses so you can make sure you is ready for for church people danced in the kitchen is right.

You heard the gossip in the kitchen, the secrets that were kept from them and happened in the kitchen.

So it was the center.

And still is for many women.

The center of the universe.

>> In a New York Times article that came out alone.

Why your fellow Appalachian poet, Frank X Walker, who we've known for decades, says her kitchen is a place of reverence.

>> If she's feeding you, it's because she loves you.

It's an offering and her table is an altar.

You grab a plate and it's time.

>> For worship.

Haha, I thought that was course it's poetic because Frank said it.

Yeah.

>> But how does that strike you?

That is that true?

That is almost like an altar to you.

It is.

You know, I think even as a as an educator as an administrator.

The kitchen preparing food is sort of a meditation and it's a meditation on.

The love that I'm extending to.

Whoever will eat my food.

And it's paying homage to those kitchen votes is paying homage to to my grandmother.

I can step into my kitchen without thinking about.

I love with my grandmother and even those many, many generations ago.

Yeah.

>> I want to show some pictures from your journey on on this book tour.

You've been on.

You told they have many stops.

Have you done?

First of all, can you sing 18 stops?

And so I think this this is local.

I think this might be even Joseph, that several prose and poetry.

You've been there, too.

I mean, that's that's big to be there.

But you talk about your love of independent bookstores, right, and how they've embraced praise song for the kitchen goes and we can see the numbers of just in the shot of the people who were there.

Yeah.

When you see the numbers of folks who are lining up to speak to you about this book and sharing intimate memories with you.

You know, what does this do to you as a writer who's been around a long time to do to get this kind of love?

Yeah, I mean, I'm filled with gratitude, right eye.

>> This has been the most successful that I've had.

And I think it's.

A lot of it has to do with the of love and, you know, it's it's sort of the book itself turns things on its And the reception has also turned things on its head.

Like if you look at it from its been a even with my.

But with my publisher, with with Penguin Random House because the expectations of of Hammond e-books would go to an online bookseller versus how many would go out 2 independent bookstores has switched with this book, OK?

And there's been way more.

Independent bookstores that have gotten the book Little Stores, big stores all over the country and even outside the country by people been sitting.

The snapshot from Canada and other places a shift from Brazil is as wanted people to buy in her country.

And it's just been.

The success of it has been phenomenal and have I'm still surprised.

You know, I can be sort of self deprecating a little bit, but it's also sort of what I'm accustomed you know.

Either universities or literary events where there maybe 40, 50 100 like if I go to university, there will be maybe a couple 100 people but to have 200 people standing room only in a bookstore is is a remarkable.

Yeah.

And and and your.

Oh, that's right.

You wrote that.

>> I want to show a picture.

This was up from an event back in 2017 at the Hindman Settlement School Dublin's and Okay.

And in the foreground, there is a framed picture there that I know means a lot to you.

I want you to talk about this event and how this perhaps even helped propel you to write this beautiful book.

they had called and asked me what I do.

Dumplin Sundance.

And I said, what's that >> when you come in, you make dumplings of any kind can be sweet or savory and they're going to have some plaque put and they're going to do, you know, do some dance.

And I and they said it will be, you know, they thought this would entice me.

It will be like a food network, sort of demonstration.

And I immediately said no.

>> What I want to do and they said, well, you know, I know you've been writing about food, you know, want to come to top finally decided to come in, do it.

I was really, really nervous.

And >> as I've done in my that's what I got to take my grandmother with me.

So I took the photograph of my grandmother and put in the 4.

And I also brought my grandmother stress and hung it up in that in that test When I made those temple, why is why is the dress particular importance to you?

Well, when my grandmother died in of course, it was a hard time for all of She always cook for families, had 7 children.

She had 25 grandchildren.

Several great greats and we would all gather at that little tiny house for Christmas is for Thanksgiving for Easter, whatever holiday, any opportunity.

We have Sunday dinners in the opportunity we had.

And so that first holiday after she we were kind of everybody was kind of lost in a float.

I talked to several my cousins and they were like, well, I'm just going to stay home and just cook for my own family.

And so I had the task of cooking for my own family, which was my 3 children and my son and my twin daughters and my mother.

And I remember trying to cook a big meal, which I had help granting cook many, many I had cooked every Sunday, but I just felt like I couldn't do it.

How can I do this about granny?

And I was breaking and I was crying.

I was China, you know, make the turkey trying to do the dressing, trying to do all the things.

And I remembered.

Just sort of in mount anxiety and panic that that her dress was in the closet.

That was one of the things that I'd ask 4 when she I was like, that's all I want.

address my grandfather's hat and maybe a pair of her classes I brought her dress out give up on the back door.

That was a moment.

That.

Not only that the phrasing of the kitchen goats came, but I felt like to see.

Her spirit sort of came and spoke to me or at least have felt that way that.

As if she was encouraging and I suddenly had.

The gumption that they encourage men to ahead.

It was as if she was saying, OK, come on now, you know, you can do that.

You can do Showed you had to do this.

You've got this.

The lexicon kitchen go some.

>> I've been wanting to ask you this question.

How did you arrive at that?

>> Yeah, it was sort of born that day.

And I think, you know, as riders, what we do is things happen in our lives and we.

I'm sort of took them away like I never thought I would write about that.

That was an like the myriad of experiences we have in our lives.

But I would just sort of took it away.

And years later, it's sort of slipped in.

It's a source.

The idea of its would slip into some short stories.

It slipped into the birth of opulence.

The I wrote a poem in Perfect blog Called Kitchen Goes.

And then when I wrote the essay, Price on for the Kitchen coast, just sort of unlocked.

This entire thing about all my books.

I write about the black in Appalachia.

So food, always haha.

And there's nothing >> but I never thought about writing about food in this large way, even though the concept of the kitchen coast had been with me for a long time.

But it was sort of a private.

The private pleasure that that I had.

What do you think should say about this?

I asked that quite often.

And I think you'd be proud.

But things should be proud of.

Yeah.

And say to KET the dress, right?

Yeah.

Haha.

Do take that with you.

>> I took it to New York for the photo shoot.

You know, it's in the it's in the book.

So when they did the photos for the >> it's they're and so don't take it with me.

But I often wear something like what I have on now.

That has a little bit of the lilac.

And it had to feel like she's with me and in the cover of the book.

One of the reasons why I think the book is so successful is because the artifact is so beautiful, like, OK, my writing, like I wrote but it and I hope people feel like the writing is beautiful.

But the the way the books put together is beautiful and on the inside the front pages.

The lilac color that they use when the the book designer said.

I base that color off of your granny stress.

I just, you know, everything about this whole process has made me cry.

That was one of the things that I was like.

Oh, gosh.

>> That's their p****.

Has it been for you?

Didn't need to be therapeutic.

A cathartic for you in any way.

>> I too think.

Iraq cried a lot.

>> I was writing it.

I didn't realize that writing about food into writing.

This particular book was going to be.

So emotional.

I don't know why I didn't think it would But of course it was.

And I wrote much of the book in isolation like through.

Through COVID and that I was on writing retreats for a lot of it.

So I was alone a lot of times with my memories.

as I was stacking things up.

But I didn't expect that to really.

Transfer to the to the larger world.

But I think it's been healing like I think all of my in some some ways.

Working to pay homage to black will life.

To black Appalachian life.

I've gone deeper here and I feel like.

That Afghan it like I've gone to the other side, not but I won't KET writing about it because it's my Phang.

Na what I write about.

I do feel like it has been has been healing.

>> Do you have a favorite recipe?

And here the biscuits are on the front Not try this because you said, you know, biscuits are easier.

Nice try to make that.

Yeah.

But what's your favorite recipe?

I think my favorite recipe.

>> To cook and heat is the chicken into a plant.

Some yeah, because that there's so much.

So many within that.

But I think that my most nostalgia recipe in there is the jam cake.

Is the jam care.

Why?

Because there's such a story.

Such a history to blackberries, with my family like every summer, everybody, but go Blackberry picking in all the things you had to do to go back, pay picking, you know, you had had to put in the others.

Do I make it in the summer in Kentuckyian you had to put on long pants and long sleeves and wrap something around your wrist and your ankles to KET 2 and you had to, you know, Reese, the private sector reaching those bramble.

So mild libraries have stickers on them out of our buyers on them.

Not to mention us Knight that come into the sakes, copperheads rattlesnakes and so this is a hard one proof Biden, those black.

That's right.

It's hard won.

And then my grandmother would take them home and watch them off and we need a few to make by brick.

Half of that night.

>> And then shoot can blackberries and and so what would happen then that Christmas is that she would take a jar of those can berries and she would make the jam.

And then she would make the champ cake.

So.

You had memories on top of the BlackBerry packs that we often went to was also where the family graveyard was.

That went all the way back to slavery.

So you always got a lesson during the BlackBerry picking up where my grandfather would say that's where my brother Andrew Sperry.

He was for yourself when we lost him upon the Nop hears pod GM and that point and many of those grades for unmarked and they would point to where those people or so yes, and then to have that little.

The end of summer.

In the winter, right in the dead in, you know, cause my grandmother did make jam cake for Thanksgiving.

It was only the cake at Christmas.

But there is by Bears.

Of course, you know, was he was ear.

>> I I think one of your best looks all.

But the last one is the best one right?

But it's you draw that parallel between the in labor intensive work, Blackberry picking.

That's what we to the struggles of being black in Appalachia.

This black experience period.

But also, you know it it can be a personal reminder of your mother.

You're right about this.

And maybe even an act of grief you talk about how when you're grieving her passing about 2016, I think it was how you would sit down and you would eat a bowl of biscuits and blackberries and cry.

Yeah.

That's more than just the Briar patch.

Yeah.

I mean, but it's all of it all together.

And it.

Yeah, Blackberries was one of my was my mother's one of my mothers favorite.

>> Pruitt's to and I think for the same reason, like we're always in search of, I'm always reaching back.

And so I think my mother, even though you know, the Blackberries, we had mostly were from at that out of the grocery store in from Mexico.

And they're very different from the wild blackberries that we had when we were younger.

Just that case, just that hand of it take you back.

And I think that's what she was looking for.

And that's still what I'm looking for when just did this last week when I got off book to but some of the areas out of grocery store which were from Mexico made the BlackBerry.

Sue can put 2 biscuits in an ad din cried and cried.

Yeah.

>> There's so much to talk to you I do want didn't want to talk to have time to come back to talk about the imprint the screen But I do in the 2 minutes we have remaining because I'm going to have you back.

Talk about Bell Hooks because we so appreciate you.

When that project was in its embryonic stages.

The producers who are colleagues of Sarah Moyer this said, you know, Crystal can be such a help and you are throughout this one-hour documentary.

And we're seeing the pictures of her and the various stages of her life.

Talk about her influence on you really quickly and what you gathered by remembering her in the documentary.

>> Well, Bell.

Sodus what it?

But being a black book us grow.

From Kentucky.

Could do.

Yeah.

She showed us how it was What the possibilities could be.

And she also didn't sign Kentucky.

She moved back.

To to hold it up to the light all of its ugliness and all of its beauty.

And, you know, I'm grateful for that.

You know, I met her.

Years ago.

She's the reason why me and Nikki, Fannie and others while we have the sister circle.

>> That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

>> Well, many of us looked at her risk on the matriarch.

>> Of not just a block literary community, but I believe.

That you now carry that I hope you feel that.

that you are our literary luminary.

And only the best is still yet to come for you.

Crystal consent.

>> Thank you.

As I will say.

Back to Karl Hall.

Thank you for this.

Because this really tugs at a lot of us.

And thank you for honoring that.

Thanks for having me on.

Thank you for watching connections Get the book.

It's called Praise Song for the Kitchen Cups.

You will be moved just as I have been connect with me on social media, Facebook, Instagram and X to stay in the loop.

And so I see you again.

Take good care.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪