Kelley Fanto Deetz's "Bound to the Fire," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Bound to the Fire: How Virginia's Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine by Kelley Fanto Deetz.

The entry begins:

Bound to the Fire highlights several enslaved cooks, many of whom have little record of their lives aside from mentions in a will or probate. If this book could translate to a film it would be one of short cameos, small clips that highlight and intertwine with one another. Commonalities of resistance, poisoning, social positioning, and pure talent would make these historical figures fascinating on the big screen. The kitchen as the stage and the food as the evidence of their labor and lives.

I’d imagine silence before each cameo’s scene. The sound of the large open-hearth fire burning in the background, the distant noise of butchering, chopping wood, and foot traffic surrounding the kitchen cabin. The individual ...[read on]

Learn more about Bound to the Fire at Kelley Fanto Deetz's website.

My Book, The Movie: Bound to the Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue