Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780231146388)

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.

Author: Frederick Opie
ISBN-10: 0231146388
ISBN-13: 9780231146388
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/08/2008
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 09/01/2008 pg. 23
Chronicle of Higher Education 10/24/2008 pg. 19
Library Journal 11/01/2008 pg. 96