Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Tovah Ott
Audiobook
6 hr 25 min
Unabridged
Eligible
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About this audiobook

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.

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 pres...

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About the author

Mayukh Sen is the author of Love, Queenie—a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography—and Taste Makers. He is a 2026 United States Artists Fellow and teaches film and television reporting and criticism at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Mayukh Sen is the author of Love, Queenie—a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography—and Taste Makers. He is a 2026 United States Artists Fellow and teaches film and television reporting and criticism at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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