BOOK REVIEW: Hearty and hilarious taste of Nigerian life
Deftly written food essays delve into myth, marriage, maize — and mucilage (it’s not as bad as it sounds)
The prize-winning Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds is a collection of 40 essays written by Nigerian food writer Yemisi Aribisala. With chapter headings ranging from Ram Testicle Suyato Okra Soup and the Demonic Encyclopaedia of Dreams, she traverses Nigerian food culture, recipes, politics, anthropology, folklore, sexuality and more. She works her way through the marketplace, picking a plantain here, a yam there and fermented locust beans everywhere. While Aribisala starts with basic cooking ingredients, her writing is provocative, unique and highly amusing. The oral tradition of storytelling is ever present in a book that has delightful touches of magic realism. The term long-throat refers to gluttony or a love of food, suggesting a large appetite and gullet. Aribisala recalls street hawkers walking past her home with food on their heads, calling out their wares. This had the effect of "forcing you to make constant interaction with food and food aromatics, con...
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