TASTE MAKERS: SEVEN IMMIGRANT WOMEN WHO REVOLUTIONIZED FOOD IN AMERICA BY MAYUKH SEN
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2021 BY NPR, THE STRAND, AND OTHERS
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOK PRIZE
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’S WHO READ WHAT: FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE
NAMED A BEST BOOK FOR THE HOLIDAYS BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, VOGUE, OPRAH’S O, QUARTERLY, AND OTHERS
THE OFM 50: THE OBSERVER FOOD MONTHLY’S 50 THIGS WE LOVE IN THE WORLD OF FOOD RIGHT NOW
BOOK OF THE MONTH DECEMBER 2021 ADD-ON PICK
AMAZON’S BEST OF THE MONTH — BIOGRAPHIES & MEMOIRS
AND MORE
My debut, Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America, was published by W.W. Norton & Company on November 16, 2021 and is available wherever books are sold in North America. (It is out internationally in early 2022.) Read excerpts adapted from the book in The New Yorker web and The Atlantic.
Read interviews with me about the book in Vogue, the Guardian, Levi’s, and many other places. Listen to me speak about the book on the New York Times Book Review podcast, NPR’s All Things Considered, the Kirkus Reviews podcast, and elsewhere.
For book publicity in North America, please contact Will Scarlett at W.W. Norton & Company. For international press, please contact Oliver Wearing. For film/television rights or speaking inquiries, please contact William Callahan at InkWell Management.
PRAISE FOR TASTE MAKERS
“In this dazzling debut, James Beard Award–winning food writer Sen looks at the lives of seven remarkable immigrant women whose passion for their homeland’s food transformed how Americans cook and eat... A vibrant, empathetic, and dynamic exploration of culture, identity, race, and gender... Thoughtfully written, Sen’s portrayals of his subjects reveal how rich and nuanced being 'American' can truly be.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review
“James Beard Award–winning food writer Sen makes the scope of his ambition clear in the introduction to this illuminating work: he seeks to “trouble the canon of culinary brilliance” by highlighting and contextualizing the stories of seven immigrant women (cookbook authors, teachers, and chefs) who transformed concepts of international cuisine in the United States. Sen’s biographical essay format allows each woman’s life story to shine. … A must-read for those interested in culinary or women’s history and the evolution of American cookbooks.” — Library Journal, starred review
”Sen is a sensitive and perceptive journalist and a deft historian; his willingness to let his subjects speak for themselves whenever possible gives his book a compelling power.”
— Hetty McKinnon - New York Times Book Review
“[A] perceptive group biography.” — Bee Wilson - London Review of Books
"[A] love letter to the immigrant women who defined food as we know it." — Emma Specter - Vogue
“Mayukh Sen's enthralling debut book...blazes with rage at this injustice as it commemorates these creators’ merit and mettle.... There is outrage in his tone as he chronicles the discrimination his subjects encountered, but he makes his case without too heavy a hand. He is actually generous to all, even Julia Child, who, we learn, struggled with misogyny in the food world. Sen fuses deep research with a debater’s ardor and moves seamlessly between biography, history, and cultural analysis. The overall impression is one of disciplined persuasion. … Sen has written an urgent and timely book. Passionate, well written, and accessible, its story of the vigor, struggle, and fleeting success of seven immigrant women offers a counternarrative to conventional understandings of success and failure in the food world.” — Sharmila Mukherjee - Los Angeles Review of Books
“Sen traces the intimate details of these women’s lives and the broader social conditions that shaped – and in many ways stifled – their work. An important book that, like the work of the women it describes, deserves the widest audience.” — Killian Fox - The Observer Food Monthly
”[T]his book is more than history or biography. It is also an interrogation of cultural politics and historiography, of who and what gets recorded, remembered, forgotten and celebrated.” — Jenny Bhatt - NPR
“A fascinating and impeccably researched book. Taste Makers is a joyous celebration of the cooks whose lives have enriched so much of our cooking and eating.” — Nigel Slater
“Taste Makers is beautiful. Mayukh makes the American kitchen feel vast, interconnected and full of wonder – never insular, small-minded or cold – and weaves together these undertold stories with unmatched care and respect. He's a masterful chronicler of American cooks and cooking, and we're lucky to have this book.” — Ruby Tandoh, author of Eat Up!
“Taste Makers introduced me to the life stories of extraordinary women and offered me an invigorating history of cooking—as life's purpose, as pleasure, as political act—in America. Mayukh Sen writes with great heart and a spirit of vibrant inquiry to give us a magnificent book.” — Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
“A beautiful, engaging, and long-overdue book, one which highlights some of the best-known and most influential cooks of the recent past as well as some whose names are not as familiar but should be. An invaluable book that’s also a pleasure to read.” — Mark Bittman, author of Animal, Vegetable, Junk
“Mayukh Sen isn't the first to write about women who made significant cultural contributions while being undervalued during their lifetimes, and even more so in death. But he does it in such a way as to make you think he might be the first. He is acutely aware of the cliches that have come to inhibit the genre, and he both challenges and upends them.” — Charlotte Druckman, editor of Women on Food
“A gathering of voices that's altogether necessary, radical, heartfelt, and intimate.” — Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt
“Through meticulous research and broad insight, Mayukh Sen follows seven immigrant women who crashed the gates of the U.S. food establishment in the twentieth century. Taste Makers is essential history for understanding American food’s current reckoning with inclusion and diversity.” — John Birdsall, author of The Man Who Ate Too Much
“Reading Taste Makers is a lot like enjoying an amazing meal: It surprises you, fills you, and you're sorry when it's over. Mayukh Sen has crafted something truly special, a book where women's stories take center stage.” — Jessica Valenti, author of Sex Object: A Memoir
”Through his seven portraits, Sen restores a missing part of American culinary history, drawing on interviews, reviews and menus to create a compelling story about the love of food, the pull of the tastes of one’s homeland, the delicious pleasure of sharing the richness and complexity of your most cherished recipes with strangers at your table.” — Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times
”…[A] necessary addition to the food-writing canon and a lovingly crafted work of women’s history.” — Rosa Cartagena - BitchMedia
”A prizewinning journalist serves up profiles in culinary courage of seven immigrant women who transformed American cuisine … Sen's book is its own delectable feast and homage to the kitchen queens who reigned supreme.” — Hamilton Cain and Joshunda Sanders - O, Quarterly
”A queer person of Bengali descent, Sen has been drawn to the stories of those in the food world whom the food and food-media establishment in the U.S. often forgets or erases...[Taste Makers] is more nuanced than any blurb could explain; one of Sen’s gifts is a storytelling ethos and skill that values context and belies simple summary. The stories of the women in this book … embody a kind of caring attention rarely found in typical food writing.” — Sarah Neilson - Shondaland
”Mr. Sen has picked an esoteric group and writes about them with empathy in short, well-researched biographies.” — Moira Hodgson - Wall Street Journal
“[A] stellar group biography.” — Nathalie Atkinson - The Globe and Mail
”Mayukh Sen proves that he does much more than write about food … What Sen does is bring these seven women to life in cinematic fashion, rendering their life stories with a propulsiveness that evolves as the text goes on to reveal not just their experiences but the whole of American culinary history … Taste Makers is a work of biography and cultural criticism that should have the food media establishment on edge in its turn away from the paternalistic perspective on the meaning of immigrant labor.” — Alicia Kennedy - Book of the Month
”Taste Makers made me wish for a time machine so I could rewind to when I was a young cook and find in any of them, all of them, my role models and mentors.” — Roxana Jullapat - Wall Street Journal
"[R]esurrectional ... The magic of Taste Makers is in the lightness of the prose and the dense research it reveals. In less than twenty pages, Sen shows you crucial moments of history in food culture, and leaves you with an understanding of how quickly and thoroughly the past can be forgotten.” — Naben Ruthnum - The Globe and Mail
"Throughout his profiles of seven women who arrived in the United States and helped shape the country’s still-forming modern food culture, Mayukh Sen develops themes like motifs and variations in a symphony. … “Taste Makers” is a propulsive read thanks to Sen’s meticulously researched storytelling … Also, he begins the book with a sharp, concise, unsparing introduction, in which he addresses, among many pressing topics, one obvious question: “Why is a man writing this?” His persuasive, transparent answer is worth reading for yourself." — Bill Addison - Los Angeles Times
"...[S]ensitive and insightful profiles of those who didn't make the history books." — Lee Svitak Dean - Star Tribune
“While Americans have taken to these cuisines, the contributions of these women have been largely forgotten. Mayukh Sen rediscovers their legacy in intimate, sensitive portraits.” — Senjuti Patra - Book Riot
“As someone who has been reading cookbooks for 60 years, I’m acutely aware that there is a vast collection of valuable voices that didn’t just spring up in the last decade. I’m lucky to have that historical context, but many do not. Talented award-winning writer and professor Mayukh Sen’s book remedies this by shining a light on seven immigrant women who were trailblazers of their times.” — Evan Kleiman - KCRW
“[Sen's] insider-outsider perspective is what makes his voice distinctive ... It is possible – almost – to read Taste Makers as a kind of hagiography, a collection of portrayals of women who, despite the odds, accomplished great things, made valiant strides and blazed trails for others to follow. Yet this is no cosy armchair, feel-good read. 'The book should make you squirm,' he writes. And it does.” — Susan Low - The Independent
“Each of these women fought against a system that often tried to pigeonhole, minimize, demean, or exoticize them. ... Sen’s book is both a series of compelling portraits and a deeply researched challenge to entrenched American historical narratives.” — Diana Hubbell - Atlas Obscura
“Tremendous work...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...Given Sen’s careful research and crystalline prose, Taste Makers proves a refreshing contribution to US culinary history, suitable for scholars and general audiences alike.” — Alice McLean - Gastronomica
“A book that not only documents a remarkable collection of lives but chronicles the working methods of an exceptional writer…an extraordinary book.” — Cynthia Rekdal - International Examiner