OP: A Good Heart and a Light Hand (unsigned)
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The Turnpike Press, 1968. Wire comb bound. Very Good Minus. First printing.
“There is something special that every Negro knows that I can only call ‘the Negro Welcome.’ In Alexandria, Virginia, where I have always lived, I can go into any Negro home at any time and know that I am wanted…There’ll be enough food, because we always cook for the friend who might drop by. They are our family, and we consider our family numberless. For our family, the pot is always waiting…”
The ethos of Ruth L. Gaskins ’ introduction to A Good Heart and a Light Hand (1968) is the guiding thread through her self-published cookbook benefitting the Fund for Alexandria, Virginia—primarily providing aid to the city’s Black citizens. Nourishing the body, soul, and community are all one here.
Simplicity and much love are found in enticing country dishes like: corned fish stew (a favorite of elders), baked hominy and cheese, possum casserole, stewed spareribs and sauerkraut, smothered chicken, barbecued oysters, hog maw salad, sweet potato biscuits, and blackberry pudding.
A humorous afterward reveals a heavy reliance on white recipe testers, as Black cooks assigned with the task only crossed out the recipe “and marked it no good, writing in their own version in its place,” naturally preferring their own recipes to anyone else’s.
The book was picked up by Simon & Schuster in the same year Gaskins released it. The self-published first printing, which we offer here, is not often seen.
Ours is lightly soiled throughout, and the acknowledgements page at the front is present but detached. Wire bound with sturdy boards. Black and white illustrations by Porge Buck (1931–2022), many of them of churches and community gathering places in Alexandria. Included in Toni Tipton-Martin’s bibliography of Black cookbooks, The Jemima Code.
Very Good with light shelfwear.
