What is Soul Food? Essay

Boas was a life-long fighter and advocate for equality amongst all peoples, being a strong proponent of pluralism and aligned himself with the struggle of African Americans. Boas understood the need for proper cultural representation and the need for those in observance of culturally specific items and representations to seek out the term he coined “the wealth of thought” that persists throughout all human cultures and is achievable by all human beings, a beautifully idealized expectation. Nonetheless, he is quoted and said to have “practiced eating foods he didn’t like in order to “accustom myself to the deprivations in Africa” and eating no foods at all for the rigors of Artic

Another common form of slave resistance was theft. Slaves pilfered fruits, vegetables, livestock, tobacco, liquor, and money from their masters. The theft of foodstuffs was especially common and was justified on several grounds. First, slave rations were often woefully inadequate in providing the nutrition and calories necessary to support the daily exertions of plantation labor. Hungry slaves reasoned that the master’s abundance should be shared with those who produced it. Second, slaves

In Jessica Harris’s “The Culinary Season of my Childhood” she peels away at the layers of how food and a food based atmosphere affected her life in a positive way. Food to her represented an extension of culture along with gatherings of family which built the basis for her cultural identity throughout her life. Harris shares various anecdotes that exemplify how certain memories regarding food as well as the varied characteristics of her cultures’ cuisine left a lasting imprint on how she began to view food and continued to proceeding forward. she stats “My family, like many others long separated from the south, raised me in ways that continued their eating traditions, so now I can head south and sop biscuits in gravy, suck chewy bits of fat from a pigs foot spattered with hot sauce, and yes’m and no’m with the best of ‘em,.” (Pg. 109 Para). Similarly, since I am Jamaican, food remains something that holds high importance in my life due to how my family prepared, flavored, and built a food-based atmosphere. They extended the same traditions from their country of origin within the new society they were thrusted into. The impact of food and how it has factors to comfort, heal, and bring people together holds high relevance in how my self-identity was shaped regarding food.

During the slaves’ trip through the middle passage, they had to abandon their old customs and hide their religious rituals as well as priceless artifacts. After arriving into the new world, they had to adapt themselves and create a new way of life in order to survive. Slaves introduced many different foods and edible plants to the colonies (“Slavery”). Before their journey to the colonies, they had gathered black-eyed peas, okra, lima, and kidney beans and brought the food with them. Traditional African dishes and techniques have been perpetrated in American food culture, most prominently deep frying, gumbo, fufu and millet bread. Also, many nursery rhymes and folklore were derived from those of Africans, some famous ones being Chicken Little and Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. Furthermore, indigenous people had made drums, but due to some slave owners banning them, they were forced to use foot tapping as well as clapping, which are two motions prominently featured in today’s music culture. These achievements mentioned are only some of those notable contributions African culture made on white in the

Agriculture and food is also a unique aspect of African American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products, such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, grits, and cotton, can be traced to African and African American influences. African American foods reflect creative

There is just something about Southern Cooking, something about the women who’ve mastered it, and something about what it represents. A Southern Feast represents time spent in careful preparation and an almost entire region of people that didn’t get the memo about cholesterol. Southern cooking brilliantly displays a community that still remains untouched by at least some of the craziness in the world around us. Things move a little slower in the South, and one of those things is the cooking. Preparing a Southern feast is a job. It is hard work, and it takes some time, but that is part of the charm. This cooking is the kind that allows for sitting around canning

For many people, culture and identity are closely tied to identity-- sometimes so closely that the things they do, eat, or say may not even feel like a conscious decision. However, from an outsider’s point of view, it is easy to note the differences between cultures in many different ways. One of the most tangible examples of this is, of course, food. When speaking to many people from older generations, it is easy to see how much food is entwined in their stories from the past, whether they come from far away or are still living where they were born. Throughout Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, food is heavily used in many different ways to represent multiple races.

Incorporating Mississippi Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives, the diary of Emma Finley, and excerpts of the Finley family cookbook from 1858 with artifact evidence found at the Hugh Craft House from the foundation repair in 2008 and excavation artifacts from Fall 2014 and Spring 2015, together, will give a greater insight to the foodways of the Craft family and slaves residing on the site. The purpose of this paper is to examine the artifacts collected, cataloged, and analyzed thus far from the Hugh Craft house and slave dwelling site and compare the findings to analysis of slave diets throughout the south up until 1860 to determine if the Hugh Craft family and their nine slaves shared food or food patterns.

It must seem nice being able to eat like a colonist during the First Thanksgiving, but was it always that great? The meals of today contain snacks and fun food, but people in the thirteen colonies had very simple meals. People used many techniques that are used even today to preserve food. What made it even harder was if there was a war, where people couldn’t hunt in fear of being killed. People had to rely on very easy foods when traveling. While all colonists in the thirteen colonies came from England, food differed in all the regions, especially in the New England and the Middle colonies. Food today brings people joy and is a way to socialize with peers, but back in colonial times, it was just a way of fueling the body.

Most of the food provided in industrial slave compounds consisted of food found on rural plantations - corn and less desirable parts of the pig. Some corporations provided enough food to satisfy the slave’s appetites because a healthy slave was more productive than a slave

Food, has a specific meaning to all of us; for some it is a form of nourishment, for others it is a cultural act,

When flipping through the thousands of documentaries on the many streaming services there are three main criteria come to mind; one looks for the entertainment factor, credentials of the information the and lasting affect it leaves on the viewer. The documentary Soul Food Junkies directed and produced by the filmmaker Byron Hunt defiantly has an interesting take on these main criteria. The documentary holds ones attention with comedy and relatability with a family aspect, though interesting there’s plenty of experts and hard facts even though personal option is projected from the producer. The documentary does leave he viewer with questions about their own habits and that of the ones around them. Soul Food Junkies hits and misses the criteria

In “The Pleasures of Eating” Wendell Berry wants the reader to recognize that eating is a cultural act. He believes we are eaters not consumers and that we should have more knowledge about the food we eat. Berry wants the reader to questions where the food is coming from, what condition is it produced in and what chemicals may it contains. He has found that the food industries blind us to what we are consuming and the effect it has on us. At last Berry believes that we must eat responsibly to live free.

During the first week of class, four readings were assigned. One of the readings, “Food and Eating: Some Persisting Questions,” by Sidney Mintz, discusses the paradoxes of food. Although food seems like a straightforward concept, it is actually extremely complicated. According to Mintz, there are five paradoxes, including: the importance of food to one’s survival, yet we take it for granted, how people stick to their foodways, but are willing to change, whether the government should allow people to freely choose food or if they should protect the people through regulations, the difference in food meanings according to gender, and the morality of eating certain foods. All of these paradoxes give people questions to think about, making this an extremely philosophical look at food studies. It also mentions that food must be viewed through the cultural context that it is in, which became important in “The Old and New World Exchange”, by Mintz, and “Maize as a Culinary Mystery”, by Stanley Brandes. These discuss the diffusion of foods after 1492 in different ways. The Mintz reading gives an overview of all of the foods spread from the Americas to the Old World, and vice-a-versa, but does not go terribly in depth on the social changes and effects of specific foods. Brandes focuses on the cultural impact of specifically maize on the European diet, noticing that most Western Europeans shunned it. He studies the cultural implications of this, concluding that maize was not accepted

Survivalist’s, is something I could label Black culture philosophy because of their strong sense of will, and strong believe in the word of God. It is apparent that their motives, and their reality seems to have close ties to their Christian believes. The Grandparents, teach their children those same traditions that are then passed down to the next generation to mold them, and to keep those same traditional values. Brown cultures do things somewhat similarly, but they are not as strict in church dress code as Black culture is. Brown cultures love cookout gatherings; that would consist of Tacos, Posole, Menudo, or Tamales. These are Mexican cuisines that are passed down from Mexico, to every family’s next generations to come. However, Black cultures would prefer more of Ribs, Brisket, some Chicken, Pork (Ham), or Links in those kinds of environments. Also, sauces and dressings are a key part of Black culture as much as the food is. This is also something of a traditional kind of delicacies for both sides, which takes place every weekend, especially somewhere in the Oakcliff