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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.
Frederick Opie's culinary history is an insightful portrait of the
social and religious relationship between people of African descent
and their cuisine. Beginning with the Atlantic slave trade and
concluding with the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s,
Opie composes a global history of African American foodways and 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.
Soul is the style of rural folk culture, embodying the essence
of suffering, endurance, and survival. Soul food comprises dishes
made from simple, inexpensive ingredients that remind black folk of
their rural roots. 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.
"Hog and Hominy" traces the class- and race-inflected attitudes
toward black folk's food in the African diaspora as it evolved in
Brazil, the Caribbean, the American South, and such northern cities
as Chicago and New York, mapping the complex cultural identity of
African Americans as it developedthrough eating habits over
hundreds of years.
"A significant contribution that enriches historical narratives.
This is a wonderful case study that complicates Latin American
history, and particularly labor history in that region, by
emphasizing the positive role played by black migrants in labor
mobilization in Guatemala."--Jean Muteba Rahier, Florida
International University In the late nineteenth century, many
Central American governments and countries sought to fill
low-paying jobs and develop their economies by recruiting black
American and West Indian laborers. Frederick Opie offers a
revisionist interpretation of these workers, who were often
depicted as simple victims with little, if any, enduring legacy.
The Guatemalan government sought to build an extensive railroad
system in the 1880s, and actively recruited foreign labor. For poor
workers of African descent, immigrating to Guatemala was seen as an
opportunity to improve their lives and escape from the racism of
the Jim Crow U.S. South and the French and British colonial
Caribbean. Using primary and secondary sources as well as
ethnographic data, Opie details the struggles of these workers who
were ultimately inspired to organize by the ideas of Marcus Garvey.
Regularly suffering class- and race-based attacks and persecution,
black laborers frequently met such attacks with resistance. Their
leverage--being able to shut down the railroad--was crucially
important to the revolutionary movements in 1897 and 1920.
Frederick Douglass Opie, professor of history and foodways at
Babson College, is the author of "Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from
Africa to America," and a blogger at www.foodsasalens.com.
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