Sweet sorrows

A continent-hopping debut novel explores the lives of a Caribbean-American family.

- CHERYL PEARL SUCHER

BLACK CAKE, by Charmaine Wilkerson (Michael Joseph, $37)

In times of great migrations from oppressed homelands, refugees are often forced to flee with only what they can carry on their backs. What are never left behind, however, are the sensual evocations of ancestral comforts: native melodies, family anecdotes, memorised landscapes, regional dialects and the aroma of beloved meals cooked using improvised recipes passed down through generations. Like Proust’s madeleines, these memories can recreate lost universes and ease the pain of forced separations.

Years ago, while researching women’s survival under Nazi occupation, I discovered the book In Memory’s Kitchen, a reproduction of a catalogue of recipes for beloved Czech dishes written by starving women during their incarceration in the ghetto/concentration camp of Terezín. The act of writing down these ingredients and their preparation sustained these women. Food was a physical sustenance but also an emotional one.