Jessica B. Harris is the author of eight critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora: Hot Stuff: A Cookbook in Praise of the Piquant, Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa's Gifts to New World Cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish Traditional Caribbean Cooking, Tasting Brazil: Regional Recipes and Reminiscences, The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, A Kwanzaa Keepsake, The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent and Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim A culinary historian, she has lectured on African-American foodways at The Museum of Natural History in New York City, The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco,
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC as well as at numerous institutions and colleges throughout the United States and Abroad. She is currently working on a narrative history of rum tentatively entitled Rum: History in a Glass, a book of side dishes and condiments entitled On the Side.
In her three decades as a journalist, Harris has written book reviews, theatre reviews, travel, feature and beauty articles too numerous to note. She has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas, particularly the foodways, for publications ranging from Essence (where she was travel editor from 1977-1980) to German Vogue.
She has written for most of the major food magazines Including Gourmet, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, and Eating Well. She has chaired panels and given presentations at the Fancy Food Shows in both San Francisco and New York, At Chef Magazine's Chef des Chefs, at The Caribbean Culinary Federation's annual Taste of the Caribbean, where she has given the keynote address for six years, and at IACP and AIWF conferences too numerous to note.
Dr. Harris has made numerous television appearances on shows including The Today Show, Good Morning America, Mike and Matty, The Main Ingredient, and B. Smith with Style. On the Television Food Network, where has appeared on the Curtis Aikens Show, Sara Moulton's Cooking Live, and TV Food News and Views. She has hosted five episodes of Chef du Jour and served as the resident food historian of Sara Moulton's Cooking Live Primetime from July through November 1999.
In addition to her work on the foodways of the African Diaspora, she is also the author of The World Beauty Book (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), a collection of beauty secrets from women of color around the world, the co-editor of La Vie Ailleurs (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), a multicultural French text, and the translator of Ton Beau Capitain by Simone Schwarz-Bart. She was, for six and a half years, a restaurant reviewer for The Village Voice in New York City.
A tenured full professor in at a college in New York City, Harris holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Queens College, The Universite de Nancy, France, and a doctorate in Performance Studies from New York University where her dissertation focused on the French-speaking theatre of Senegal. She has been a National Board member of the American Institute of Wine and Food and is a life member of the College Language Association, a founding member and board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and a board member of the Caribbean Culinary Federation.
