Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History) (Hardcover)

by Professor Frederick Douglass Opie (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Although the cooking of African Americans did not earn the sobriquet “soul food” until the advent of the Black Power movement of the 1960s, its origins stretch back to the very earliest days of colonial America. To survive, slaves transported from their native lands had to learn to cook with the leftover, less-desirable meats and vegetables that their overlords shunned. They combined these with memories of the foodstuffs of tropical West Africa. From these beginnings came a host of dishes that have become integral components of the larger American tradition. Historian Opie goes back to the sources and traces soul food’s development over the centuries. He shows how Southern slavery, segregation, and the Great Migration to the North’s urban areas all left their distinctive marks on today’s African American cuisine. He concludes that soul food has recently commenced a decline as Caribbean cooking has grown to dominate much of African American culinary practice. --Mark Knoblauch

Review

"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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (September 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231146388
• ISBN-13: 978-0231146388
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #393,785 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #14 in	Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Regional & International > U.S. Regional > African American
  #42 in	Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Regional & International > African

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!, October 23, 2008

By	Sean Higgins "Certified History Nut" (Rochester, MI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I enjoyed this book immensely! I found that it gave excellent detail on the origins of soul food and tied it nicely from colonial America to modern day America. This book filled in the historical holes that I have found in the Food Network, Discovery Channel etc... programs about soul food and Southern cooking.

The book is both a scholarly work as well as an entertaining read. I have no doubt that Dr. Opie will add "Best Selling Author" to his resume of accomplishments.

3.0 out of 5 stars Awkward look at a great topic, November 29, 2008

By	Eloi "[e-mail]" (Ely, NV USA) - See all my reviews

I had a lot of interest in the topic but found the book hard going. In the first half, Opie establishes that Africans were already familiar with American foods like corn and black-eyed peas before the slave trade really got under way. He goes on to cite (I can't say "incorporate") various sources which produce factoids about the slaves' cuisine. The first half of the book reads like a dissertation that has been adapted into a book, common enough in academia.

The book does get interesting in Chapter 7, "The Chitlin Circuit." Here Opie clarifies the origin of the term "soul food" as something that grew out of the civil rights struggle, particularly in the 1960s. Opie acknowledges that the hog jowls, grits, chitlins, greens and so on represent the same food eaten by white southerners, especially poor white southerners. He quotes Amari Baraka, Pearl Bowser and many others to show their effort to claim this cuisine as a central part of African-American culture.

There's a lot of info in this book (although it is too focused on New York City), but the great, sweeping STORY of black people's eating is still waiting for a writer.