From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman and this is Good Food.

There are many casualties of war, the immediate and personal, but other losses go unnoticed until later.

As culture is decimated amid global violence, food and culinary traditions can be the last remnants when everything else is left behind.

Michael Shake looks to those preserving their heritage after experiencing so much loss in our modern world.

His new book is The Last Sweet Bite.

Hi, Michael.

Hi, thanks for having me. From the minute that our team read the

intro, oh, we were there. What a book. Wow, thank you. That means a lot of you coming from you guys.

Extraordinary. So the book begins and takes its title from a poem by former U.S. Poet J. Harjo.

Tell us about the poem and the work you did for the better part of a decade.

Well, the poem is something that I have kept on my desk, Miss Harjo's poem for a very long time. It's called Perhaps

the World Ends Here, and it's about a kitchen table, and it's about the myriad things that happen

at a kitchen table. It's a metaphor for life. The poem gets into how life revolves around a kitchen

table, families, gossip, life, death,

the good times, the bad times, how it acts as shelter in times a storm,

and just places where beauty takes place.

And it reminded me a lot of the many people that I have met throughout my human rights career

investigating war crimes and genocide for different human rights organizations.

And kind of the tremendous efforts they went through to preserve their food traditions in times of crisis.

You quote historian Ansel Mojotra partitioned. went through to preserve their food traditions in times of crisis.

You quote historian Ansel Mahotra, partition is not yet a thing of the past.

Would you share the story of your family specifically as it relates to your father's side?

...