BOOKSHELF BOOST

These new and recent cookbooks celebrate the roots, range, and reach of African and African American cooks and remind us how much Black food matters.

Zoe Adjonyoh blends life stories with vibrant recipes inspired by her Ghanaian father in her debut cookbook, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen (Voracious, $30). She offers recipes for popular dishes like fante fante (a fresh fish soup) and bofrot (Ghanaian doughnuts, also called puff-puff) and her own Ghana-fied Caesar Salad.

In New World Sourdough (Quarry, $28), Afro-Honduran baker Bryan Ford uses sourdough starter to create classic Europeanstyle and delicious Latin American-style breads.

That James Beard Award-winning chef Alexander Smalls connects food with music is no surprise—he’s also a celebrated opera singer.

In Meals, Music, and Muses

(Flatiron Books, $35), chapters pair food styles with musical genres as Smalls reflects on his South Carolina roots and the tastes and sounds that influenced him.

Chef Marcus Samuelsson and food writer Osayi Endolyn celebrate

Black American food’s diversity with terrific recipes and chef profiles in The Rise (Voracious, $38).

Bibis (grandmothers in Swahili) from South Africa and seven East African countries are at the center of Hawa Hassan’s cookbook,

In Bibi’s Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, $40). Along with oral histories, photos, and facts about each bibi’s home country, Hassan shares generations-old recipes and food traditions.

Lawyer-turned-baker Vallery Lomas serves up more than 100 sweet dessert recipes in her debut cookbook, Life Is What You Bake It (Clarkson Potter, $30).

In Black Smoke

(The University of North Carolina Press, $30), culinary historian

Adrian Miller shows how Black cooks and pitmasters shaped American barbecue.