The Kitchen Isn't Where You Cook

Marisa Logan is a Black girl who doesn't know how to be Black. In "The Kitchen Isn't Where You Cook" we see Marisa come-of-age in a small, white Michigan town in the '80s as the only Black girl in school. Sure, she's pretty, smart and popular, but none of that can mask the fact that she's "different."

As she grows, however, she doesn't want to assimilate anymore. During college, she settles into her identity as a campus leader of the Black Student Alliance during the "Fight the Power" era and later as a successful engineer battling microaggressions in corporate America.

"The Kitchen Isn't Where You Cook" ends with Marisa returning to her hometown soon after the 2016 election, when she is forced to confront the possibility that the people she grew up with - people she thought she'd always love - may have voted for division, hatred and racism. Can she deal with her fondest childhood memories being tainted?

Candace Johnson is a 2023 Hurston-Wright Fiction Fellow and a graduate of Michigan State University. "The Kitchen Isn't Where You Cook" is her first novel. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two children.