In the spring of 2020, well-known food writer Alison Roman found herself “canceled” over disparaging comments she’d made in an interview about Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, a fellow cookbook author and a lifestyle expert, respectively. Some people called the remarks sexist, suggesting that Roman was undercutting other women, and others charged that they were also racist (Roman is white, Teigen and Kondo are both Asian). The controversy set off a chain of events that has since widely reshaped Roman’s work and life, The New Yorker documents in a new profile. Shortly after the firestorm, Roman left a job as a recipe developer for The New York Times, started her own newsletter and YouTube channel, and is now in the nascent stages of launching her own store in the Catskills (not too shabby for someone who got canceled). Her continued popularity has also made her larger than life in unexpected ways: Today, her success has come to symbolize a certain hip, laissez-faire approach to cooking. It’s also turned her into an unwitting (and arguably unwilling) launch pad for conversations about food and race. —Jessica Fu