Taste Makers TR by Mayukh Sen

Product Details

• Publisher: WW Norton (2022-10-18)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 240 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781324004516
• Item Weight: 272.16 grams
• Dimensions: 20.96 x 13.97 x 2.03 cm

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.

About the Author

Mayukh Sen is the James Beard Award–winning author of Taste Makers. He is a 2025 Fellow at New America. He teaches film and television journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.