Leadership and the Humanities Class Blog Posts

While reading chapters 3 and 4 of Zinn’s, Peoples History of the United States I was fascinated by what I learned that I had no previous knowledge of. I had no idea of the extent of the extremely corrupt foundation of America. The descriptions of life for white servants in the early days of colonial America horrified and surprised me. One quote that struck out to me was, “The country therefore was not born free but born slave and free” (50). The majority of the freedom and wealth was secured by the small upperclass. This upperclass completely controlled the government/wealth and therefore the rest of the people in the society. I was surprised by the way these servants were treated. Their treatment was very similar to the treatment of black slaves. From the conditions on the boat to America, to the selling of servants, to the beatings/whippings, laws against servant marriage without permission, rape of the women, harsh working conditions, etc. This all shocked me. This horrible system of oppression and violence has been ingrained in and apart of our society since the beginning. I had no idea how deep this kind of behavior in society ran. It took numerous rebellions/riots like Bacon’s Rebellion to begin to change this system (however only in favor for whites).

I never knew that after their indentured servitude most servants were never able to re join society in the way I previously thought they were, “80% who were…hopeless…died during their servitude, returned to France/England, or became poor whites” (47). As a result of this growing lower class, “Poverty and Discontent appear in every Face (except the Countenances of the Rich) and dwell upon every Tongue” (52). The wealthy of course desired to keep their position of power and were terrified of uprising. So they used this power to create laws to separate the poor white, the black slaves, and the native Americans. Racism grew and was becoming practical due to this fear of rebellion from the minority groups. The wealthy used racism/classisim as a way to control these groups for their own monetary/political gain. The conditions in Colonial America for everyone expect the extremely wealthy white landowning men were atrocious. “The colonies were societies of contending classes” (50). I had no idea that the gap between the minority elite rich and the poor lasted for a significantly long time in colonial America.

This reading left me with some questions. I wonder why the servants, black slaves, and native Americans didn’t come together in more of a significant way? Especially since the ruling class was the minority. I also wonder how what Englands role was (if they had any) in maintaining the racial/class divide? As well as maintaining the wealth for the elite few? I find myself asking this after every reading we do but why have I not learned more about life in colonial America-very specifically the political, racial, and class divides?

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Today’s first reading showed me exactly how rich whites in early America gradually turned a new land with potential for equality and prosperity into a land of continued oppression and systematic inequality. In my mind, it all begins with the need basic need to survive. Zinn describes the hardships that early settlers faced in terms of lack of food as he quotes Wilcomb Washburn on page 40, “there was genuine distress, and genuine poverty”. He continues to describe a “dry summer” that ruined the corn crop, leaving a lack of food, and destroyed the tobacco exports, leaving a lack of money. However, a small percentage of wealthy white businessmen and land owners were able to keep their head above water and survive more easily than the rest. This inequality would only grow, and eventually be used as a weapon by the wealthy elite to further their own agenda. As times in the colonies progressed, it got better for a few, and worse for many others. Zinn writes that in 1770, 1% of people owned 44% of the wealth of the country. A key point to remember here is that only landowners could vote. Therefore, as financial inequality progressed, the ability to vote and have a say in this new society became less available. At this time, poor whites were struggling, native Americans were struggling and victim to oppression, and imported African Americans were also persecuted. 

At this point I began to think: “Why don’t the poor whites, native americans, and blacks join forces to push against the white elite?”. The more I read, I realized the answer to this stems back to biological human needs. Native Americans and blacks were kept at a distance from wealthy whites. However, poor whites were able to intermingle with both the rich whites as well as the Native Americans and the blacks. While native Americans and blacks had a population large enough for the poor whites to join and potentially overthrow the rich white elite, the poor whites wanted food, security, and community with the rich white elite. The white elite understood the potential for a revolt from poor whites, natives, and blacks, as Abbot Smith says, “it is a lively fear that the servants would join with Negroes or Indians to overcome the small number of masters” (pg. 53). However, rich whites used “concessions” (pg. 57) to the middle class, using them as a “buffer” pg. 54 to continue westward expansion. This Zinn describes this concession as the upper class using promises of “liberty” and “equality” that got their attention enough to push for a revolution against England, but not for the liberty and equality of those building the country, natives and blacks. 

This chapter especially made me want to ask the question: “What if?” so many different times. What if the dry summer hadn’t caused such struggle and inequality, and the wealthy elite weren’t able to control the actions of the poor? What if poor whites would have joined forces with natives and blacks, rather than furthering the agenda of the wealthy elite? Would we have had to go through the systematic racial inequality in America if they had?

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Zinn’s chapters “Persons of Mean and Vile Condition” and “Tyranny is Tyranny” discuss the growing class and racial divide between Americans. White settlers contributed to this class divide by not only treating people of color as inferior but also pinning minorities against each other. Something that really stood out to me was that black slaves were used to fight the Native Americans. The same idea discussed earlier that white Americans thought black slaves were easier to control is also portrayed in these chapters. Zinn mentioned that Native Americans rebelled more than black slaves, so settlers started to enslave black people more than the Native Americans. However, as the number of black slaves increased, so did the likelihood for the slaves to rebel. I think that the dichotomies that Zinn mentions are really important to recognize. He speaks of the contrast between slavery and freedom, servant and master, tenant and a landlord and finally the difference between the poor and rich. This inequity and class division seems to be what lead to the growing gap between classes.

The “Tyranny is Tyranny” chapter also discussed these class differences but more in the sense of financial differences rather than racial. However, these two ideas seem to go hand in hand, especially during the time of increased slavery and the establishment of the country. Zinn mentioned how Edmund Morgan sees racism as being more of a class issue than a race issue because both issues are related to one another. Generally the upper class would receive more benefits and monopolize the political power while the poorer people were struggling to fulfill their basic human needs. This brought about the issue of whether we should take some wealth from the richer people in order to prevent one group of people from being financially and politically elite. However, when you think about the people who are making laws and signing legislation, these are all white and wealthy men. Thus Zinn states that Indians, black slaves and women were all left out of the Constitution because they were “politically invisible” in comparison to the white wealthy men that ruled the nation.

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In chapter 3, the author mentions that the member of the rebellion, those who were white, came to the New World in hopes of a fresh start. The white members of the rebellion were mostly made up of criminals, vagabonds, or English, but in poverty. Wasn’t the idea of coming to the New World supposed to be about truly getting that fresh start and a second chance. We see from reading this chapter that not all English men and women were in a better situation from where they came from. They were still underneath and property of the elites. We weren’t taught that the white men had to work under elites, mostly just people of color were those who had to work for no pay in the New World.

We see all the way back to the colonization of Virginia that the classes mattered. It mattered if one came over with money, it mattered if you messed up before you came over to the New World. Today, 2020 it is still mostly true that once all debt has been paid back, it is still rare to jump from one socioeconomic class to another. That is what happened in the 18^th century as well. Once those were freed from their debt still struggled and lived miserably. Some servants found future and fortune, but that wasn’t exactly how everyone turned out.

The chapter suggests that as England was fighting in some wars, they managed to pour their financial burdens on the colonies. Yes, the colonies have been somewhat financed by England, these actions had created more of a divide between the classes in the colonies. We see that those on the top didn’t really care about anything, but themselves and the over top percent. The hardest part of reading this chapter was the fact that this is still a problem in the United States today. In 2020, a year of crazy ups and downs the gap between classes has widened even more. When will enough be enough? When will the next rebellion happen?

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Chapter 3 and 4 of A People’s History of the United States discuss the growth of class divisions that occurred within colonial America. I was very surprised when I read that more than one half of the colonists that came to North America came as servants and the majority of them either returned to their home country, died as servants, or became a part of the poor white class. This led to a sharp distinction of class that created many conflicts across lines. The lower, “poor” class was doubling and created problems of crime and theft in cities which forced the building of housing and correctional offices to try and combat the issues. An interesting idea was brought up in “Persons of Mean and Vile Condition” when Zinn said, “The country therefore was not ‘born free’ but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich” (50). This shows how there has always been a deep rooted division of people determining wealth, treatment, and placement in society. 

I thought an interesting trend throughout “Tyranny is Tyranny” was the mindset of the “rich and important” people of the colonies towards how to control the lower classes. They wanted to gain enough support to be able to defeat the British control over the colonies without ending slavery or erasing class lines. They did this through language that created anger and resistance towards England but also to avoid uprising of classes. The strategic and careful manipulation of language to the colonists was driven by the desire for power and wealth of the “important people” of colonial society. I think this is very interesting because this can be seen in many different aspects of life today. Class divisions, desire for power, and drive of wealth play a large role in today’s society where many similarities can be seen between now and the colonial period.

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The readings and podcast this week gave me a whole new perspective into identity and culture about which I had never truly realized. It seems so obvious that food is such a huge part of our lives, and yet it is so easily forgotten in these discussions. Where and what we eat determines so much about our family traditions, our pasttimes, and our heritage, and easily shapes and influences much of our daily lives.

I found the connection between food and family history for descendants of enslaved people particularly interesting. We talked last week about how it is often impossible for many descendants of enslaved people to trace their heritage and origins due to the carelessness and lack of humanity of the settlers that stole people from their homelands. Although it is not the same and will not ever fully make up for this piece of their identity that will forever be lost, I enjoyed reading Twitty’s personal account about the history of food and cooking in his family and about how, even through the tragic and inhumane circumstances that brought them to the United States and forced them to do this type of cooking, it has become an intregral part of his identity and culture.

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All three of these readings were genuinely enjoyable. All three chapters really highlight Twitty’s relationship with his own culture and history, but through food and cooking. It is so interesting to see history taught through lenses opposed to the traditional way. Food is such an important part of culture, and reading about it, and the traditions that come with it, can be such an intimate way to learn history. “Your plate is your flag.”

Books like these make it so much easier for the reader to connect to the message. Food and culture in food is such a relatable thing, and something that most people, if not all, experience. It makes it so I feel more connected to the author and I can understand him in such a human to human way. So many times, reading these stories, it is so hard to conceptualize because these things happened so long ago and sometimes learning about history can feel very disconnected and far away. This type of writing makes the whole difference for me. Reading about Twitty’s hardships, especially about his inability to find his family’s ancestry feels so much more personal now. I can feel how lucky and privileged I am to be able to trace down my great great grandma’s recipe for pāo de queijo, whilst Twitty and many others cannot. This is something that is not talked about enough within our community. It is also something that I believe should be governmentally funded. Finding where you come from is vital to your identity, and to see people being robbed of that and nothing being done to repair that is unacceptable.

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It is amazing for me to have the opportunity to read these stories from the prospective of the oppressed. Being a white male from the south I now know the voices I often heard growing up were those of the oppressor. This new found perspective not only allows me to better grasp the gravity of our nations history, but also the impact our ancestors have left on us and the state of our culture. In a prior podcast Dr. Bezio talked about the idea of living in a world with hundreds maybe even thousands of cultures. Having a new and more accurate definition and understanding of what culture really is I am able to see how we arrived to our current state in America. Our past has impacted the lives of all Americans but none have been impacted more than the black community.

When I think about all that we have begun studying thus far, culture sticks out to me. The ability to identify with a group or culture of people is something we are all entitled too, or so I thought. In Twitty’s chapter “No More Whistling Walk For Me” he describes the attire worn by cooks during their time on various plantations. As he continues to describe the treatment he received as a cook I could not stop thinking about how he was being robbed of that freedom. I am humbled by his resiliency. To have your identity stripped from you due to the color of your skin is crime that cannot go without punishment. I am speechless at all of black Americans that were able to rise above their oppression a hundred years ago, and today.

Twitty refers to American plantations as a “Labor camp system for exiled prisoners of war and victims of kidnapping”. I was intrigued by his description of these plantations because prior to now plantations had always been described to me as big beautiful farms. Again, that is a result of the oppressor. What else about our nations history has been tainted to fit the narrative? I wonder

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What most resonated with me about the reading “No More Whistling Walk for Me” was the continual themes of defiance toward erasure of black ancestry and the narrator’s reclaiming of individual power as a black American. Throughout the chapter, Twitty places great emphasis on the troublesome nature of reflecting on his heritage; he reflects on the enhanced ambiguity of black identity in the south in reference to the increasingly heterogeneous makeup of Southern demographics and culture as well as the overload of daunting histories behind confederate battlegrounds and burial grounds for enslaved people. This made me think of how multifaceted it must be for black Americans to take efforts to reclaim pride in their histories and personal positioning in society. I find our University history to be extremely relevant in this conversation, especially considering the recent projects done to inform the campus community of the history of the land we study on, having been once used for plantations and acting as a burial ground for enslaved people. It’s extremely important for the campus community at large to be mindful of the impact that this has on our University culture as well as the influence it has over the experiences of black students on campus. I find it devastating to know that our campus was built with disregard to the lives of black people laying to rest on our grounds after having struggled under slavery and fought for their humanity. Knowing this, the campus community has a great responsibility to foster a culture supporting black students in fighting for liberation from oppression and marginalization. In Chapter 1, Twitty discusses singing traditional African American songs while cooking and the joy it brings him while reflecting on their painful history, being sung by slaves by obligation to prove they weren’t eating while working, etc. In parallel to this, it is my hope that UR can reflect on its history in such a way that empowers its black students, that on a community level, we can be sensitive to the racial issues of our past and present in such a way that makes black students feel liberated in pursuing education and success here with an understanding of how this land’s shameful past has transformed our community into what it is today. This does, of course, demand the cooperation of white students and those who enjoy other societal privileges, which presents a great hurdle in the progression of our community.

On another note, I would like to reflect on Twitty’s commentary on the paradox of ancestry as a black American. He makes a point to say he is between the eighth and twelfth generation of his family born in “America,” rather than saying “the United States.” Here, he employs national nomenclature to emphasize the divisiveness of American culture through history. He figuratively relates the country’s historical desire to elevate white lives over those of black citizens by way of denying black Americans full accessibility to an understanding of their familial histories as ensured by early practices of slave trade. Twitty is unsure of which generation of his family he falls into because of America’s history, and as an act of reclaiming his familial identity, he refers to himself as an “American,” and not a citizen of the “United States” to emphasize the idea that he holds power in his individual identity despite our country’s historical attempts to take the power of identity away from black Americans.

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I found this podcast very interesting because I come from a multicultural background. I am half white, half Indian, and my white side is Jewish. Rather than saying that I have three different cultures I believe that those three aspects of my life and traditions that go with them make up my culture. I think that saying the idea of culture is a “combination” of elements is a really good way to put it because there’s so many aspects and ideas that contribute to a culture. A lot of the time when I think about culture my mind immediate goes to race and ethnicity but it doesn’t always need to be categorized by that. When thinking about all the elements that make a culture I’ve realized that different people in the same ethnic, racial or religious group can have extremely different cultures. Many people relate race to culture which is why I think stereotypes are so prevalent and generalized.

It’s important to recognize that people of all cultures can be stereotyped or represented incorrectly. I agree with the idea that having minorities and people of color play a positive role in pop culture is really important for the younger generation. I also think that if children see a person that looks like them shed in a positive light then they will be more accepting of their heritage and skin color. However, it’s important to recognize there’s a huge distinction between representation and inclusion. This brings about the question of is it better to include diversity in pop culture even if it’s inaccurate or should we not include diversity if it incites stereotypes and generalization. Obviously it’s best if we accurately depict people in movies and shows but that hasn’t been the case so far. The podcast made me wonder why stereotypes are so commonly portrayed in children’s movies and if they contribute to racism and biases.

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In the opening three chapters of The Cooking Gene, Michael W. Twitty, explores African American culinary history in the South, and illustrates the major role that food plays in the identity of a culture’s makeup. In these three chapters, Twitty uses his passion for food in order to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of his African American identity. In the chapter “No More Whistling Walk for Me,” Twitty mentions that for him “…food is in many cases all [he] ha[s] [to] go to in order to feel [his] way into [his] past.” (21) as his heritage and ancestry is largely unknown due to slavery in the United States. Twitty discovers the unspoken pieces of African American history by studying the food that his family eats.

In the chapter, “Hating My Soul,” Twitty describes the significance of his families’ kitchen in his childhood. Twitty recalls the numerous meals that his family cooked together, which played a major role in the understanding of his family’s identity, and the various important conversations that took place at his kitchen table, such as when he came out as gay to his family. Twitty’s description of his family’s kitchen table as a place of “…argument, and resolution,” (40) resonated with me because a lot of important conversations and debates within my family take place at our kitchen table. Every night my family gathers for a family dinner at our kitchen table, where we talk about each other’s days’ and events that are taking place in our lives. A lot of really important information within my family is talked about at our kitchen table, such as when my parents told my siblings and I that our two new cousins were being born.

Furthermore, Twitty’s remark that “Food is often a necessary vehicle between one’s ancestors or the spiritual forces that guide their destiny,” (59) really connected with me because there are a few recipes within my family that have been passed down from my great-grandparents that symbolize my family’s history. For example, every Thanksgiving my grandpa cooks home-made blueberry pies that his grandmother used to cook for him when he was a child. The first three chapters in Twitty’s The Cooking Gene, made me realize the immense insight that food offers into families’ identities and history.

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Once again, I feel like my view point on not only history, but things in my everyday life is being reshaped. My outlook on the relationship between culture and food is new. In all three readings, Twiddy offers different stories and outlooks about how food influenced his relationship with his own history. How cooking came with singing and tradition and stories.

In conjunction with the podcast, the readings illuminated the different roles food can play in someones life. It can be a part of the the heavy prejudices and stereotypes that can come with unique cultures. Yet it can also be a way to connect with heritage and the past. Signature dishes can be more than just a yummy treat, they are a way of connecting with the people that came before.

What concerned me was how possible it seems that this important part of culture can slip away. Whether money and class prevents cultural dining, or just the popularity and ease of fast food, default American food seems to be the go to. Before reading this article I may have had a different opinion, but now I believe that it is imperative that the history of food remain intact.

The question it brings me to is how do we continue to celebrate the unique heritages and cultures through food? In a country where the default audience is based for white folks, there needs to be a way to make ethnic food as accessible and affordable as every other food. America has already stripped away and rewritten so much history, we need give people the ability to preserve their own.

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Michael Twitty’s (2017) The Cooking Gene conjured up a series of memories from my upbringing in a Southern, black home. For me, my identity is rooted in the foods my family cooked and in the responsibility my family has in teaching the younger generations our culinary secrets. Similar to Twitty (2017), the intersections of genetics and African American heritage dishes- also known as Soul Food- always leaves me yearning to learn more about my ancestry and heritage with every Christmas dinner my family and I prepare on Christmas Eve as tradition. Yet, with every year that passes, I become concerned when a member of my immediate family- including myself- forgets how to prepare certain dishes that were once taught to us by the now-deceased members of our family, our ancestors. I am concerned because with every consecutive dish forgotten means that subsequent generations will forget not only those special seasonings used to coat the catfish in or those mental notes on how much sugar to add to the cornbread mixture, but that they will also forget our deceased family members- our ancestors- and the narratives they carried with them. In part, I feel this is because of the rising pressure for members of society to spend more time working and building wealth for their families that they do not have the time nor energy to be culinary historians like Michael Twitty. So, they do what they can and what is convenient- spend money on various fast food franchises to feed their family’s appetite so much so that the food native to that family’s history and culture tastes out of place when it meets that person’s taste buds again. This only leads me to be more concerned about the survival rate of African American food withstanding the effects of time.

 

In response to Dr. Bezio’s fourth podcast and the readings from Twitty’s (2017) The Cooking Gene, I have a few pressing questions: How can we protect our cultural foods and the histories that come along with them, from the rise of globalization? While I firmly believe that intercultural communication and collaboration is something our society needs more of, how would the mixing and acceptance of different cultures affect the way we eat, cook, and even remember our foods that are aspects of our identity and ancestral history? Could this possibly fuel the erasure of foods and ancestral narratives for minority groups? I am in no authoritative position to give answers to these questions; however, I am simply curious to know what other people think about the future of the foods we continuously cook with our families over holidays, for celebrations, and during certain times of the year.

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After reading the excerpts from Michael W. Twittys’ The Cooking Gene, I felt truly engulfed into the culture that was created in the American south surrounded by the plantation lifestyle. Although these people were viewed as property without alienable rights, their rich culture devised from people all over the world has manifested the south into what it is today. Southern culture cannot be discussed without discussing black culture, and black culture in the south was formed on the plantations that blacks were first brought to America to work on. It was formed in the kitchen, on the fields, in the slave quarters, and in the big house where the house slaves worked. It hails from all over the world, the first true melting pot culture as the people themselves hailed from different parts of the continent. They brought their traditions with them from their homelands and blended it with others to make it their own. As we learned in No More Whistling Walk for me, It was also formed in Europe, when slaves like James Hemings got the chance to learn to cook from the best french slaves in the world and bring it back to the plantations. However, it is not about where and how their culture was formed. The why is the most important part of this equation. having a distinct culture they could call their own gave the slaves hope that they were in fact humans like everyone else and not property. It willed them to keep waking up every day despite the hatred and abuse they would face from their masters who viewed them as cattle. The slaves were given the worst image of themselves. Every day they were constantly told how ugly and useless they were by their masters. The culture they had gave them joy when they were depressed and hope when they felt hopeless.

As our author tells us, so much of the slave culture was passed down orally because of the lack of literacy. The stories were told through songs, riddles, and prayers that were always being recited and sung around the plantation. Twitty, being a direct descendant of slaves, has many oral stories to share with us. Food is the main course, but there are many side dishes to this culture that these people take such pride in. Their culture was truly their own, and it was the one thing that couldn’t be stripped away from them.

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I found all three readings to be interesting. Specifically I enjoyed the heavy theme of cooking and food that showed throughout all three documents. One of the first things that came into my mind while reading the documents was what Dr. Bezio said in class on Wednesday about learning history via food, which is very true. Based upon what types of food are popular in different locations, we can tell if there is or was a large population of people from that nation or region living in that area at some point in time.

 

When reading Mise en Place and Hating My Soul, both by Michael W. Twitty, I found it very interesting how the people from the Mise en Place chapter did and were interested in traveling back to the various states that, at some point in history, had large populations of slaves while the people from the Hating My Soul chapter didn’t visit nor pursue visiting states where their ancestors were from. I was surprised to see that people didn’t want to visit where they came from and where their traditions really started.

 

Lastly, as I was reading Mise en Place I thought it was interesting to see how food and ethnic origins helped to shape modern day cities and events. The creole and other styles of cooking that formulated during and after the enslavement of the Africans are still around, and are population, to this day. A line from the passage that I find to be true is, “Food is often a necessary vehicle between one’s ancestors.” I think this is very true. Food truly helps people connect. Food can connect people who have been fighting or arguing and it can even connect those who have trouble communicating. An example would be a language barrier. To me it’s interesting to see how something so simple and necessary as food can bring people together.

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Reading Twitty’s “No More Whistling Walk For Me” really made me think about how history books leave out how badly Africans were treated. Sure the textbooks would talk about slavery and how it was bad, but they never went into detail about how white people mistreated them and all the pain and trauma Africans had to endure just because Europeans were lazy and did not feel like doing the hard work themselves. I feel like Twitty’s stories should be put in history textbooks to get first hand examples of how Africans felt when they were forced into slavery. Twitty stated, “In all my days, I have been asked to prove everything I have ever said, but I have never heard a single one of those docents challenged for using racist folk history as fact.” I feel like that is still a common problem African Americans or just people of color go through, having to prove the things they say so people will believe them. While white people usually do not have to prove every little thing they say, because they are seen as the dominant race which leads people to believe they are smarter as well.  Putting Twitty’s stories in textbooks would show other African Americans how he grew up not liking soul food and also not liking being black, which could potentially help black kids learn what it means to be African American so they won’t grow up hating their history and believing it is all bad.

Twitty also really made me think about southern and soul cuisines and how racial stereotypes, prejudices, cultural attitudes, and intercultural misunderstandings are connected. Southern cuisine is associated with white people, while soul cuisine is associated with black people. What I never really thought about before reading Twitty’s stories was the fact that food was and still is a gateway African Americans can use to feel their way into their past and open up conversations about individuals and group survival. As well as how much goes into cooking, Twitty brings politics and race, sexuality and spirituality, memory, anger, etc by using all of this twitty masters measurements, recipes, and things like that. This shows how helpful knowing your own past is, along with knowing the past of your people.

 

 

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The opening chapters of Michael Twitty’s book, The Cooking Gene, shed a light on the underrepresentation of non-white culture in American society. For 400 years, white people have held a monopoly on American culture, making it difficult to discover and enjoy cultures that do not meet the cookie-cutter standards of “traditional American culture.” Specifically, Twitty discusses the origins of culture in food, identifying the slave plantations as the bedrock of southern food. 

These origin stories are often neglected due to a lack of historical evidence as well as a reluctance by some in the African-American community to revisit a history of  southern culture plagued by slavery Jim Crow. This attitude is changing, though, as the “modern South is … beginning to engage the relationship between the racial divide, class divisions, and cultural fissures that have tainted the journey to contemporary Southern cuisine” (Twitty 6). Twitty embodies a newfound willingness to pursue the roots of southern food. In his book, he describes his childhood memories of trying new foods and learning how to cook traditional African-American meals that included foods such as okra and field peas.

One story in particular struck me because it closely resembles my experiences with southern food. When Twitty took a trip to the South with his dad, they stopped at a restaurant and Twitty said, “So they give you all you want to drink, and lots of chicken and stuff, but there’s flies everywhere and it’s really hot all the time?” (Twitty 52). His description of a southern restaurant is very close to the experiences I’ve had in similar situations.

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The three readings and podcast four really opened my eyes to how many memories are associated with food and how much food affects our culture. For me personally, food is in the center of everything. It is part of my identity and makes up my personal culture. I base when I do things around where and when I am eating, and a lot of important moments and accomplishments have been celebrated with food. All of my memories that involve food are happy ones. For many people this is also the case, but for some it is the opposite.  

Unfortunately, due to slavery and the kidnapping of African Americans during early times, it is hard for many blacks to trace back there ancestory. However, through food, oftentimes they feel a connection to their families and culture. In the reading No More Whistling Walk For Me we learn that, “today’s American food culture is a contested landscape in search of values, new direction, and its own indigenous sense of rightness and self-worth.” (page 6). This stands out to me because I am happy to hear that food for so many people is much more than what is on the plate. It stands for culture, happiness, values, and so much more. Food is also a significant part of history and has been shaped and advanced to become what it is today. I find it very special the way food can bring so many different people together to create memories that will last a lifetime. 

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This week’s readings cover the idea of ancestral struggle (to track, to resonate with, etc) on a deeply personal level through Michael Twitty. His life follows a winding path of rejection, acceptance, and embrace of his African American identity. His personal triumph of becoming his own self-constructed identity (like his Grammy!) is representative of a larger societal movement towards re-learning the implications of one’s ancestry. The privilege of easily knowing about those who came before you makes the process of forming your own identity much less emotionally pain-staking. 

Moreover, it becomes clear that the privilege of knowing ones heritage in a context not weighed down by violence, slavery, and genocide has not just emotional consequences, but practical ones, too. For Twitty, his experience in the culinary field has long been marked by the search for a personal cooking identity. His career revolves around forming a deeper understanding of who came before him, and what was left out of his history, in order to broaden the palette of what he cooks. For a chef whose ancestry is not so violent and complex, the existing historical palette is a great privilege.

I found Twitty’s descriptions of plantation tourism culture to be most infuriating, it feels to be a disservice to the true history of those grounds. As explained in Dr. Bezio’s podcast, the white supremacist culture exists as a means of othering and exclusion. In terms of historiography, the history of those enslaved on plantations has been told through the lens of white supremacist culture. This was made painfully clear by Twitty’s anecdotes about his time working as a chef and academic in and around plantations. It was painful to read that the ancestry he had struggled with for a lifetime was reduced to consistent disrespect of his career and standing in the field as a historical cook.

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I enjoyed these passages a lot more than the previous readings. I thought that the personal detailed information created a stronger sense of interest and understanding of the story. I didn’t feel too disappointed or disgusted after reading his passages compared to previous readings. I never realized how important food is until after reading Twitty’s passages. I personally am a huge foodie, I wake up every day and the first thing I think of is where I can get good food, but I never looked at food in the way Twitty does. I think of a food appreciation more like loving the taste rather than the background and culture behind the importance of where food comes from or whom it’s eaten with. On page 6, Twitty uses the metaphor “your plate is your flag.” This metaphor highlights the different cultures that are behind the food. The different food from different countries represents the importance of family recipes and culture that is behind every chef. For example, in my family every time we have a big family dinner my grandma will cook lasagna. My grandma’s ancestors are from Italy and this family recipe has been passed down for generations. I hope one day I can be in charge of the crinkled up paper with the lasagna recipe on it. 

In contrast to Twitty, I actually know my family’s ancestry. Although my family rarely talks about our Italian ancestry, I know where the lasagna recipe comes from which connects me with my family’s past and I am grateful for that opportunity. I cannot imagine the feeling Twitty has about the disconnection he feels to his ancestors. Although he is making up for it by cooking his culture’s food, the mystery of his ancestors is still present. The fact that many African American’s lack of access to their family tree is not talked about, is not okay. I never learned about this in school and am quite disappointed. Family recipes are a reminder to every family about the memories of past generations. It is a connection from parents to grandparents and so on, as well as a connection to people’s homeland.

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