Jori Lewis is an award-winning independent writer, editor

Jori Lewis writes about the environment and agriculture mostly from the Global South. In 2018, she received the prestigious Whiting Grant for Creative Nonfiction for her book, Slaves for Peanuts. She is also the senior editor of Adi Magazine, a literary magazine covering global politics. Jori Lewis splits her time between Illinois and Dakar, Senegal.

 
 
 
 

INTRODUCING

Slaves for Peanuts

Recent Publications

 
 
 

Slaves for Peanuts: Americans consume over 1.5 billion pounds of peanut products every year. But few of us know the peanut’s tumultuous history, or its intimate connection to slavery and freedom. Lyrical and powerful, Slaves for Peanuts deftly weaves together the natural and human history of a crop that transformed the lives of millions. Author Jori Lewis reveals how demand for peanut oil in Europe ensured that slavery in Africa would persist well into the twentieth century, long after the European powers had officially banned it in the territories they controlled.

 

FEATURED WORK

  • The Future of Mud, The Atlantic

    A Senegalese architecture firm is championing a lower-tech material than concrete to help cities prepare for climate change.

  • The Peanut King, Guernica

    Beneath the economic empire of the richest man in Africa lies the lowly peanut. An outtake from Slaves for Peanuts

  • Baobab

    The Eternal Tree, Emergence Magazine

    Venturing out from her urban home in Senegal, Jori Lewis is drawn to the wisdom and resiliency of Africa’s baobab trees: ancient arks of biodiversity that have migrated across the landscape, enduring for millennia.

  • Peanuts

    The Peanut Plague, Discover Magazine

    A toxic fungus infects crops eaten across the developing world. Scientists are engineering a solution.

  • Twilight for the Sawfish, Hakai

    In West Africa, the sawfish was once a source of cultural pride and power. What happens to traditional African cultures as it disappears?

  • Slaves of history, Aeon

    A personal exploration of the lives of descendants of slavery in Senegal.

Contact Jori

For book rights queries, contact Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company.

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