In 1995, Dr. Jessica B. Harris first published “A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook.” This year, the cherished book was republished with updates, additions and a new foreword by Carla Hall. Harris, the prolific author of numerous works, including the widely celebrated “High on the Hog,” told me, “People needed a new version.”
As Harris writes in the book’s introductory essay, many are “always surprised to hear that the Black American feast of Kwanzaa was established in 1966 [when] Maulana Karenga decided that Black Americans needed a time of cultural reaffirmation.”
