“I learned the most about food when I had the least amount of money to spend on it. The years were not romantic. I had no choice but to draw on the tradition to get me through.” (pg. 265)
In chapter fourteen Adam in the Garden, Twitty opens by describing the years in which he had little money for groceries and how he combated that with his “victory garden” in which he grew southern heritage seeds to combat his hunger. He describes strategically laying out his space, sometimes sacrificing a plant he loved for one that may better feed him over a long period. I very much felt the quote above, I have learned the most about food while I have had the most limited access to it, and I have fallen back on many long-time traditions and traditionally cheap foods to survive. The way he describes this garden is with reverence and fondness, he describes the many lengths he went through to take care of his garden.
“Shifting cultivation, the uses of animal manure and ashes as fertilizer, using vegetable scraps to enhance a garden’s fertility, multiple turnings of the soil, and the modeling of garden spaces after the plant communities of nature — all tips out of the permaculture handbook– can hand-in-hand with the Africans to the South” (pg.267)
Twitty connects this to historical black gardening, going back to slavery times and the small pieces of land available for enslaved people to grow their plants on. He explains how lifesaving these gardens were, with many meals being consisted of soups and stews of whatever was available. Black gardening and farming has always been a means of survival but these smaller, family gardens were passed down as tradition through generations after slavery ended, as Twitty describes the gardens and practices of his family members.
“History did not let the historical black garden go unremarked. These spaces were little landscapes of resistance: Resistance against the culture of dehumanizing poverty and want, resistance against the erasure of African cultural practices, resistance against the destruction of African religions, and resistance against slavery itself.” (pg.269)
He later highlights the reduction in Black land ownership, especially in Black agriculture, noting that the ancestors of people once forced to work the land, who learned how instead of the colonizers, are becoming more and more disenfranchised from it. As we seemingly move into worse and worse economic times, this takes away the accessibility of historical means of survival for one race of people due to government interference and Western colonization. Twitty connects this with the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement and the preservation of history and culture through food and land practices.
“When you look at the traditional power objects of many West and central African peoples, like the Congo, the belly of the object is where the medicine is kept. One of the more devastating losses in the transmission of African food ways to the New World was eating as a form of healing” (pg.279)
Chapter fifteen, Shake Dem ‘Simmons Down, is a much more narrative-based chapter than most before, almost exclusively following stories from Twittys child and adulthood with history sprinkled in. I really enjoyed this chapter and its flow, and it also opened my eyes to the places in my own writing where I am feeling disconnected and why that might be. As we get to the end of the quarter and I start to shape my project for next quarter, I am really trying to take Twittys lessons and my own reflections on his writings to heart.
This chapter’s running theme is Persimmons as the title suggests, but we also get background on the colonial practices that brought fruit trees to most all colonial plantations. Many of these fruits were already occurring wild, though some were brought over from Europe, but Twitty explains the passage taken from pre-colonial wild fruits to the orchard style seen on plantations. These sections make me think back to a book review Michael Pollan did for The Atlantic, entitled Review: Capitalism’s Favorite Drug, in which he reviews Augustine Sedgewicks’ book Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug. His review article highlights the way in which the Native people of rural El Salvador were cut off from their food source, a similar story to the one Twitty describes with the wild fruits of North America. When large coffee plantations moved in and “purchased” the land the native people were living on, they had no choice but to work for the plantation as the colonizers would persecute the natives for “poaching” fruit off their land. This not only enforced dependence on the invaders but also destroyed their farmland with monocropping and bad farming practices.
“Plants were not just plants to us; they were homes of spirit; they were parts of our familiar makeup; they were part of our genealogy.” (Pg.285)
Persimmons become relevant with the telling of a story from Twittys childhood, gathering persimmons with his father. Twitty tells how his father was both afraid of falling and of being caught trespassing, but would push through for the delight of his son and his mother, who upon seeing the bounty brought to her by her son and grandson would divide and make use of their finds. I enjoyed the descriptions of the many ways they were utilized, especially the variety of medicinal practices they were used in. Food and cooking as a means of survival has been a theme this quarter but I was really interested to see food and cooking as a means of survival via medicine. I’m not sure if “cooking medicine” is a common phrase but when I say it in my head I can see a hot steaming pot, strong smells and comfort.
“Persimmon beer became my social lubricant of choice, even with a whole troop of Confederate soldiers.” (pg.291)
Twitty reiterates the search for familiar foods that went on among enslaved communities upon their arrival to the United States, as well as the story of a slave owner who would import plants from Africa and the Caribbean for his enslaved labor force, bringing over many plants that were then integrated into Western cooking. It is these many patterns of slave labor commercialism and the increased need to have survival techniques that created and preserved many of the wild foraging, medicine-making, and food preservation techniques still utilized today.
“I’m not cutting down these huckleberry bushes–that’s gallons and gallons of doobie [berries cobbler], there are persimmon trees and pomegranates and peaches growing all over this property, we don’t cut those down. My folks always said look before you cut, don’t just cut things down unless you know what they’re good for.” (Matthew Raiford to Micheal Twitty, pg.287)
Chapter sixteen is entitled All Creatures of Our G-d and King. It focuses on meat and livestock and the traditions stemming from and associated with Native foodways and enslaved populations of the colonial era.
“The food world today is populated by people who find themselves both conservators and consumers of domestic and wild animal life. A new archetype has emerged for the nurturing omnivore both petting and stroking something he (it’s usually a he) hopes will later make the perfect ethical, compassionate entree. Ecology and biology come into play — enthusiasts make passionate arguments to preserve and protect the land and seascapes from whence their calories come, Calls are made to reserve the rush to pollute, spoil, cut, and deface the planet. And rarely are these faces of color, and by color I really mean black.” (pg.300)
Soon into this discussion Twitty points out a relevant detail that very well identifies the strong ties between native people and all other living creatures, listing the many animals that were named after the homelands of native people, as a sign of their view on the tight interconnectedness between themselves and the living earth. Twitty discusses how slavery and colonialism have affected the ability to pass on traditions and way of life to the next generation, highlighting fishing as an ancestral practice taken from his due to the long-term effects of Western interference.
“Fish are as seasonal as birds or fruit. Their world is invisible to us unless we are on intimate terms with it, I feel nauseous writing about this part of the foodscape because unlike my father and ancestors before him, I had never spent any measurable time “gone fishin'” in my life. I felt deprived of a harmony robbed of me by pollution, fear of nature, overpopulation, and poor stewardship of water and air, but something in me felt healed knowing the explorers of the next generation could identify bream and its habits, getting knowledge passed down from the generations gone fishin’ before.” (pg.298)
A big distinction between Twittys descriptions of Native animal foodways and modern Western practices seems to be in the respect given to, and the remnants of the animal. Native communities held a deep respect for other living beings, each of them holding a spiritual place in their society, many representatives of deities or passed-on loved ones. For this reason, animals were not hunted past their need for survival, their naturally occurring livestock were well taken care of, and the remnants of each animal held their own place in food, medicine, or spirituality. The bones of animals especially were worn as a symbol of sexuality, fertility, and abundance.
Twitty also explores barbeque food, both in its respective cooking techniques and its roots in colonial history and enslaved peoples’ survival. He discusses the words roots in Western Africa, before diving into the many variations of animals and spices roasted to be what we now consider barbeque flavors. While barbeque flavors and cooking methods have notable roots in many places across the world, Twitty identifies enslaved Africans as the carriers of this tradition through generations, again linked to adaptation and food as a means of survival. While most people will think of Texas, I will now always think of its many passages to modern day BBQ throughout many points of origin but passed down in history by African Americans.
“Biting into the chicken, I inhaled all the rustic sweetness and peppery goodness in a day that for the lack of sports drinks would have killed me. The meat tasted incomparable to anything else I ever had or ever would have, and this was satisfying, but not as satisfying ass seeing us all come together, as family.” (pg.317)
Personal Menu Project
As the quarter is almost over I am not making any changes to what my completed draft will look like, but I did spend a lot of time this week restructuring how I would like this portion of my project to look next quarter. I am hoping to incorporate some poetry, images, and other elements into my final project next quarter, and while I will use some of the text I am not planning on going in the same story telling direction. I will still have story telling elements, but I want the narrative to really be about the food itself and evocative memory. I did finish my final story section, and over the weekend and the beginning of next week I will format it with the recipes. I also worked on making my final presentation for next week!