Slow Books

Slow Books is a curated list of books and resources that speak to Slow Food values. We hope to connect readers with food writing that inspires thought and discussion about the food you love, diverse food cultures, historical foodways, food justice and the joy of eating.

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Why We Cook: Women on Food, Identity and Connection
edited by Lindsay Gardner

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SLOW Books recommends

We use bookshop.org to host our booklist. We chose bookshop.org because their booksales support independent bookstores. Plus, Slow Food USA will receive 10% of the sale of every book sold via our booklist. We’ll put that 10% into the National Resilience Fund to directly support vital businesses and workers in community-based food systems, through local Slow Food chapters and groups.

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Women & Food: A Book List

Slow Books: Fall Picks

The Slow Books curators have hand-picked recommended readings to add to your spring reading list! Below you'll find a list of books that pair well with the issues that we're talking about and celebrating each month at Slow Food. Click the book covers below to go to...

Slow Books: Why “Braiding Sweetgrass?”

While we typically use the compass of “good, clean and fair food for all” to guide these insights, the themes of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass’ mirror many of the values engrained in that directive, making it a natural pick for our second network-wide read. Read on to learn more about why Slow Books curators Cedar, Katie, Margaret and Tammy chose Braiding Sweetgrass.

Join our 2021 network-wide read-along: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

We’re doing it again. Join the Slow Food USA Slow Books curators (Tammy, Katie, Cedar and Margaret) for our second annual network-wide read-along. We’re encouraging local chapters and interested communities or individuals to join us this fall in reading Robin Wall...

Discussion Guides

In 2021, Slow Books selected Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass as its network-wide read-along for the year. They created a Discussion Guide and revised their Virtual Book Club Toolkit. Watch a video recording of a session where the Slow Books team offered tips on how to host a chapter-wide book club focused on the book.

In 2020, Slow Books hosted a virtual discussion group to discuss How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. The Slow Books Curators developed a trio of discussion guides for the book—A Reading & Discussion Guide, A Moderator’s Guide and a Virtual Book Club Toolkit—so you can host your own discussion group! Download all three here.

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The Slow Food Book Curators

Tammy Maitland

Tammy is a coastal Massachusetts transplant who has been living in the high desert of New Mexico for the past 16 years. She has mainly worked in the field of education, either as a 4th grade teacher, substitute teacher, or environmental educator. In the last few years her love of food has blossomed right along with her growing obsession with books. Tammy has been a board member of Slow Food Albuquerque for about a year. You can find her on Instagram as @quibit_the_cat.

Katie Johnson

Katie discovered her local Slow Food chapter in Chicago five years ago while working at a commercial food broker, scratching her head at the gap between the midwest-grown blueberries they sold across the nation and local food markets. She got involved with the Chicago chapter as a blog writer and is now a chapter leader, having taken on many roles over the years, including program manager for the chapter’s food book club. Katie officially added the title of “librarian” to her resume, graduating in May of 2019 with a MSLIS. So it is only fitting that those two worlds collide in establishing Slow Food Books! You can find out more about Katie on her website or instagram @katydid_katiejohnson.

Cedar Schimke

Cedar has learned to see the Slow Food movement as a gateway to decolonizing our lives, using food as the medium. Her food philosophy is shaped by visionaries like Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass), Winona Laduke (Honor the Earth), Edgar Villanueva (Decolonizing Wealth), and Melanie Harris (Ecowomanism). Books are a medium for exploring and examining the stories we have about, and relationships we have with, our food. Cedar has been a journalist, brewer, line cook, cheesemaker, and facilitator. Cedar also hikes ~2,000 miles per year!

Margaret Woodruff

Margaret Woodruff first learned about Slow Food while researching local foods for library programs at her library in Vermont. Since that time, she has been part of the Slow Food Vermont board and worked to fold Slow Food initiatives into libraries across the state, including Plant-a-Seed gardens at the Charlotte Library where she serves as director. Books and food seem like such a natural combination!