Grimoire

Named after a magical book, Cherene Sherrard's Grimoire is a poetry collection centered on the recovery and preservation of ancestral knowledge and the exploration of black motherhood.

Incorporating experiences of food preparation, childrearing, and childbearing, the book begins with a section of poems that re-imagine recipes from one of the earliest cookbooks by an African-American woman: Mrs. Malinda Russell's A Domestic Cookbook. Mrs. Russell's voice as a nineteenth-century chef is joine...