The inspiration for author and entrepreneur Hawa Hassan’s new cookbook, “Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Community,” explores how food and identity serve as an important link among people displaced by conflict throughout the globe.
“Having been born in Somalia during a time of war, and then later moving to a refugee camp in Kenya before resettling to the U.S., I have a deep understanding of what it means to leave so much behind and then create a new beginning,” shares Hassan about her life journey so far.
Why Food and Identity Will Always Be Linked
Born in Somalia in 1986, Hassan left the continent of Africa in 1993, spending about three years of her life in displacement. It wasn’t until after spending 15 years on her own in the United States that she reconnected with her family in 2008, who by then had moved to Norway.
“I have an intimate understanding of having to use food to explore identity, having to use food to find ways to stay connected to your people,” she shares.
The author of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook “In Bibi’s Kitchen,” confides she always knew writing a second cookbook was needed to fully tell the story of how food and identity serve as a thread connecting the seasons of her life.
“I was adamant that I wasn’t going to do just one book,” she explains. “I had a desire, before I started writing [the cookbook] ‘In Bibi’s Kitchen,’ that I wanted to preserve the stories of grandmothers. But I also wanted to feature Africa in a more intimate light that it had never been seen before. I wanted to talk about our food in a way that made it accessible and not some far-away land.”
Sharing Stories of Displacement and Food and Identity Through Recipes
The result is her new cookbook that highlights food and identity among eight countries whose people were displaced by war—among them Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Liberia—and how conflict and instability shaped their food stories.
“There was a lot of historical and cultural significance despite their struggles,” observes the author. “These nations hold deep, historical, cultural and geopolitical importance. And that comes alive in the essays about each country.”
“Setting a Place for Us” is unique in the way the book’s chapters unfold for readers. Organized by country, Hassan opens with an essay on the culture and how conflict and displacement influenced food and identity.
She then reveals the creativity of each community with one-on-one interviews that home in on generational recipes and cooking techniques.
Hassan explains, “My intention was to use these recipes to bring home cooks to the table…[and follow] the evolution of recipes. It’s much more about an invitation to make these foods while learning about these countries and people.”
By Jocelyn Amador
