Virtual Calvin January Series: Caroline Randall Williams

Caroline Randall Williams: Soul Food and the Collective Cultural Memory

Caroline is an award-winning poet, young adult novelist, and cookbook author as well as an activist, public intellectual, performance artist, and scholar. She is constantly pushing the envelope with her poetry, cooking, and writing. Additionally, Williams is a writer-in-residence in medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University.

She wrote Soul Food Love with her mother, Alice Randall, to reclaim the narrative of health and body preservation through Black cuisine—and share recipes along the way. She seeks to dispel the myths that all of her culture’s food is unhealthy and the scope of their food is limited dishes traditionally labeled “soul food.”

Williams has two other books: The Diary of B.B. Bright and Lucy Negro Redux. She also wrote the viral New York Times piece, “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument.”, which discusses Williams genealogical connections to the Confederate Army and the Ku Klux Klan and advocates for the removal of Confederate monuments.

Southern Living recognized her as one of “50 People Changing the South” for her work around food justice. Neiman Marcus named her a 2016 “Face of Beauty” because she personifies “beauty, brains, and passion.”

The January Series is a FREE 15-day award-winning lecture series that takes place each year at Calvin University.  The series aims to cultivate deep thought and conversations about important issues of the day, to inspire cultural renewal and make us better global citizens in God's world. We are thankful to share this special gift with our local, regional, and global community, thanks to our underwriters.