Hog & hominy : soul food from Africa to America /

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.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2008 Booklist

Soul food, a term popularized in the 1960s, is typically associated with African American cuisine of the Southern United States. In his first book, Opie, professor of African Diaspora studies, analyzes the rich culinary origins of soul food that are rooted in world history, including the colonization of America and the Atlantic slave trade. Numerous scholars, however, including Opie, agree that many crops indigenous to other areas were introduced to Africa prior to the Columbian Exchange in 1492 and that soul food not only has roots in the American South but is a hybridization of African, European, Asian, and Amerindian food cultures. Through interviews, archival sources, and periodicals, Opie examines the eating habits of African Americans from the 14th century to the present, showing the effects that slavery, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Nation of Islam have had on the cuisine. This scholarly account is heavily footnoted and includes an extensive bibliography. Recommended for academic libraries and libraries with strong African American or culinary collections.-Pauline Baughman, Multnomah Cty. Lib., Portland, OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.