by Frederick Dougl Opie (Author)
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.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 02 Jul 2010
ISBN 10: 0231146396
ISBN 13: 9780231146395
Book Overview: What makes Frederick Douglass Opie's work so powerful and so important is that it transcends the essentialist concept of 'soul food' as rooted in timeless cultural attributes of people of African descent. Opie shows not only that African American traditions of cooking were constantly changing in response to contact with Europeans, American Indians, and immigrants from many different parts of the world, but also that as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the agricultural and culinary traditions of African peoples were in flux as a result of global trading patterns. -- Mark Naison, professor of African American studies and history and director of urban studies, Fordham University Hog and Hominy is a wonderful walk through the culinary traditions of African Americans, providing a history of African Americans simultaneously. -- Jeffrey Ogbar, director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut, and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity
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