Mayukh Sen

Who's really behind America's appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes. In imaginative, lively prose, Mayukh Sen--a queer, brown child of immigrants--reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration, and gender, Taste Makers will challenge the way readers look at what's on their plate--and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible.

Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America

Taste Makers

One of the Millions's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 America’s modern culinary history told through the lives of seven pathbreaking chefs and food writers. Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes. In imaginative, lively prose, Mayukh Sen—a queer, brown child of immigrants—reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration, and gender, Taste Makers will challenge the way readers look at what’s on their plate—and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible.

Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America

A beautiful reclamation of a pioneering South Asian actress captures her glittering, complicated life and lasting impact on Hollywood.

Merle Oberon attained Hollywood immortality with a nomination for a Best Leading Actress Oscar for her role in the 1936 film The Dark Angel. It was the first time a performer of color had received an acting nomination at the Academy Awards, but because Oberon concealed her South Asian identity throughout her lifetime and “passed” for white, very few people knew it. In Love, Queenie, the first biography in more than forty years of the India-born actress, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and previously untapped archival research to animate the Wuthering Heights star’s hard-won journey to fame. From an upbringing in poverty, she rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite during Hollywood’s racially exclusionary Golden Age. A major biography of an often-overlooked talent, Love, Queenie empathetically captures one woman’s story while illuminating truths on race, gender, and power that still resonate today.

Mayukh Sen

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