Candace Johnson, author of "The Kitchen Isn’t Where You Cook" and MSU alum, is sharing her story of cultural awakening as a college student at Michigan State University. Photo courtesy of Candace Johnson.
As a sports reporter for The State News, Candace Johnson, then Candy McCrary, covered various MSU athletics, from track to basketball to gymnastics. However, after the 1989 sit-in, she became part of a series of stories about race on campus that was published in the spring of 1990. Dubbed "Separate State: MSU in Color," the series covered topics of interracial marriage, racism in fraternity recruitment and adapting to new "racial environments" as the minority student population increased.
Her assignment, which later became a front-page story, focused on students who were minorities in high school. The article contained interviews with a white student who attended school in Detroit and a Black girl adopted by a white couple.
Inspired, Johnson wrote an accompanying column to share her experience growing up in Fennville, Michigan, a predominantly white town an hour away from Kalamazoo. Although she enjoyed her time as a cheerleader and member of the student council, there were only two other Black students in her graduating class; one was her brother and the other moved to Fennville a year into high school.
Of that student, she wrote: "She did not have an identity crisis the way I did. I knew I was African-American on the outside, but if you were trapped in a dark room with me, you’d swear I was white." Both stories appeared in an edition of The State News on May 14, 1990.
"The feedback and reception I got from that column was overwhelming," Johnson told The State News.
"I heard from the state senator, I heard from alums," she recalled. "I heard from students who said, 'We talked about your column in our sociology class.'"
That was when Johnson realized she’d stumbled onto something: Others weren’t aware that identities like hers existed. That idea turned into something greater, a novel which was self-published in December of 2024.
"The Kitchen Isn’t Where You Cook" follows Marisa Logan, a Black woman raised in the fictional small town of Petersville in southwestern Michigan. Like Johnson, the main character also attends Michigan State University and begins her cultural awakening, learning how to navigate her identity as someone who’d always be classified as "different."
The title is inspired by an interaction that occurs in the novel between Marisa and her cousin, who teases her for not knowing what a "kitchen" is.
Johnson said that, within Black culture, the kitchen doesn’t refer solely to the room in a home where dishes and pots are kept. The term also refers to the thin, delicate hair at the nape of the neck where, for Black women, the hair is more tightly coiled, making it harder to use tools like a hot comb or flat iron.
"It’s a Black term that most Black women would know about, but Marisa doesn’t because of where she grew up," Johnson said.
The divide between Black and white culture is a prominent theme both in the novel and Johnson’s personal life.
"The identity crisis story narrative is always discussed when it comes to people who are biracial," Johnson said. "You have to pick a side, you have to pick your white parent or your Black parent. It’s never told from this perspective of someone like Marisa, or like me, who have two Black parents, Black grandparents, and the identity crises in the search for your own culture within that atmosphere."
In her column, Johnson said that arriving at MSU was the beginning of her "cultural awareness."
"One of the reasons I centered Michigan State in the book … is because with a campus that size, you’re able to see the diversity and you're able to actually get out of your comfort zone and have that curiosity that I think you need."
After getting married and starting a family, what finally drove Johnson to finish the novel was reading Quincy Jones’ autobiography, "Q," though she’d started it years prior. In his book, he urges those with a God-given talent or purpose to pursue it, lest their life feel unfulfilled. So, Johnson pursued.
"Even with all the identity crises and everything else, writing has always been my go-to," Johnson said. "It’s just something I have to do. It’s not like I make a choice to write."
Johnson’s purpose was highlighting the experiences of other Black people in towns like hers: "We exist. We live in small town America in the Midwest."
