Jori Lewis is an award-winning independent writer and editor

Jori Lewis writes narrative nonfiction that explores how people interact with their environments, focusing primarily on the intersections between nature, history, and culture.

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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.

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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.

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The Peanut King, Guernica

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

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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.

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The Peanut Plague, Discover Magazine

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

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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?

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Slaves of history, Aeon

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

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