Lee Johnson’s Mixing Memory and Desire: How History Shaped the Foods of the Caribbean (Ian Randle Publishers) was published in June 2025. This is Ian Randle Publishers’s first audiobook on Amazon’s Audible platform, and it is now available. As the editor points out, the book is narrated by Johnson himself “in his dulcet Trinidadian voice.” The author describes Mixing Memory and Desire as “a food book with a large side dish of history.” [Also see the author’s exquisite artwork at artbyleejohnson.com.]
Description: It is not a cookbook – there are no recipes – or a forbidding history text filled with events and dates, but a primer for all readers of how the Caribbean’s turbulent history led to its distinctive cuisine. It is told in an entertaining and readable style, infused with appropriate poetic and song lyric extracts, and garnished with exquisite line drawings executed by the author.
Starting with the food culture of the Taino, Johnson profiles the culinary cultures of the Spanish, African, English, French, Madeiran (Portuguese), Chinese, Indian, Syrian, and Jewish peoples and the crops they brought with them. He highlights the fact that, while food that is elevated to cuisine in Europe and in most parts of Asia has traditionally been defined by the upper and ruling classes, in the Caribbean it was the very lowest class, the poorest people, who determined the culinary culture.
The book’s extensive appendix details both the indigenous foods and those that made their way into the region. And for readers wishing to delve deeper into the history of the anglophone Caribbean, there is an extensive bibliography of which academic historians would be proud.
See more on the author at LeeJohnson.co.uk.
For purchasing information, see https://www.amazon.com/mixing-memory-desire-history-caribbean/dp/976833956x and https://ianrandlepublishers.com/product/mixing-memory-desire/
Lee Johnson’s Mixing Memory and Desire: How History Shaped the Foods of the Caribbean (Ian Randle Publishers) was published in June 2025. This is Ian Randle Publishers’s first audiobook on Amazon’s Audible platform, and it is now available. As the editor points out, the book is narrated by Johnson himself “in his dulcet Trinidadian voice.” The author
