Hog and hominy
Subtitle: soul food from Africa to America
By: Frederick Douglass Opie.
Series: Arts and traditions of the table
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9780231146388; 9780231517973
Subjects: African American cookery -- History; African Americans -- Food -- History; African Americans -- Social life and customs; Cookery, American -- Southern style -- History; Cookery -- America -- History; Food habits -- America -- History; Blacks -- Food -- America -- History; Blacks -- America -- Social life and customs; Cookery, African -- History; Food habits -- Africa -- History
Description: From the Publisher: Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas. Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals, government reports on food and diet, and interviews with more than thirty people born before 1945, Opie reconstructs an interrelated history of Moorish influence on the Iberian Peninsula, the African slave trade, slavery in the Americas, the emergence of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. His grassroots approach reveals the global origins of soul food, the forces that shaped its development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective health of a community.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The Atlantic slave trade and the Columbian exchange; title: Adding to my bread and greens : enslaved cookery in British colonial America; title: Hog and hominy : Southern foodways in the nineteenth century; title: The Great Migration : from the Black Belt to the Freedom Belt; title: The beans and greens of necessity : African Americans and the Great Depression; title: Eating Jim Crow : restaurants, barbecue stands, and bar and grills during segregation; title: The chitlin circuit : the origins and meanings of soul and soul food; title: The declining influence of soul food : the growth of Caribbean cuisine in urban areas; title: Food rebels : African American critics and opponents of soul food.