{"id":183,"date":"2023-11-11T07:53:35","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T07:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/?p=183"},"modified":"2023-11-11T07:53:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T07:53:35","slug":"week-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/week-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week I continued reading The Cooking Gene<\/em> by Michael W. Twitty, as well as two sections of The Taste Culture Reader<\/em>. I left off The Cooking Gene <\/em>in week four after finishing chapter nine, so I am picking up at chapter ten and probably staying with this book for the next few weeks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In chapter ten, Mother of Slaves<\/em>, Twitty explores the geographical relationships that influenced the creation of southern food, via the arrival of enslaved Africans to America. The chapter begins with a breakdown of when and where enslaved Africans arrived on the coast of America between 1619 and 1860, and citing the two largest regions to receive enslaved people were the Chesapeake region, and South Carolina and Georgia. Twitty also notes that ninety-two percent of enslaved Africans were brought to the Southern U.S, a number that makes sense when looking at historical and cultural events, as well as modern food scapes, but was much higher than I expected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In exploring his family’s arrival to America, Twitty also begins to explore the ways in which cultures and races blended and adapted through food and cooking, pointing out specific examples in which there were strong parallels between indigenous, European, and African foodscapes, even going as far as saying;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is unlikely that enslaved Africans found themselves in a food environment that was incomprehensibly exotic or impenetrably alien; they would become allies, inheritors and stewards of indigenous ways, and harbingers of the Atlantic world, as pioneers and frontiersmen in their own right.” <\/em>(pg.165) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitty lays out his family’s landing point in the colonial Chesapeake region, with the largest regional group of enslaved people brought to this landing point being from southeastern Nigeria. He reflects upon how due to central Virginia’s high density of tobacco and cotton plantations, would go on to be the central hub for African-American communities and culinary prowess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitty presents another example of parallels between different regional foodscapes, discussing the arrival of the Igbo people from the Bight of Biafra. The Igbo believed “the yam to have sprung from the bodies of the children of the ancient divine king – yams were part of the family tree of the Igbo people.” <\/em>(Pg.173) When the Dutch brought yams from Europe to be grown in America, the Igbo people would replace the American tradition of Thanksgiving with that of Iri-ji. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Near the end of the chapter Twitty explores the way language was adapted for both cooking and survival purposes, with Americans creating new words for ingredients and dishes unfamiliar to them. Words like “gumbo”, “okra”, and “yam” are the Westernized versions of “kingumbo”, “okwuru” and “nyambi”. Colonizers also used the names of enslaved peoples’ homelands to describe foods, like e”guinea squash” and “Angola peas”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The men and women of the Kongo-Angola who permeated South Caroline life were in some ways quite culturally removed from the Atlantic Creoles from central Africa who came in during the early period to the Chesapeake. However, there were certain affinities owing to the interactions with the Portuguese. They had much in common with their West African neighbors. If the Akan brought memories of kenky and fufu, the central Africans had their kwanga (cassava loaf) and infundi or funji, the soft porridge or mush eaten as a base to the daily one-pot soup.”<\/em> (pg.188)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chapter Alma Mater <\/em>follows the journey and role of corn in the transatlantic slave trade and worldwide agriculture. I enjoyed this chapter, especially for the way I was able to connect it to one of my four credit classes Teosinte to Today: Exploring the History of Corn<\/em> in which we are exploring a very similar subject matter. I will also be pulling information I have learned in that class to add context or ideas where relevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the genius of this chapter is the way corn is used in multiple parallels at once, running seamlessly through the chapter. By starting with an explanation of the connections between African and Native American culture, with a highlight on food, Twitty relives the same point from the previous chapter about food parallels across the world, this time taking a focus on the journey and adaptation of corn, which will later lend itself to another metaphor between people and plants. Twitty explores his own heritage within multiple southern tribal communities, including the pre-colonizer names for their homelands, their journey across the southern U.S., and their food and agriculture practices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corn is perhaps the most diverse and controversial crop on the planet, perhaps excluding select pharmaceutical plants. Europeans originally did not believe that corn could not be the relative of Teosinte, a similar crop that produces smaller and harder-to-harvest seeds, which we now know to be the mother of the modern corn plant. Native tribes that grew Teosinte had perfected the art and process over generations and were able to selectively breed out the Teosinte glume architecture, which created the hard outer seed case, making them harder to harvest. Through this process, domesticated corn was cultivated, and by the time the first colonizers landed in the 1400s, corn had spread from its origin point in southern Mexico all the way to Canada. When the Spanish brought corn back to Europe, it quickly adapted to the new climate, spreading fast, as it did when introduced to Africa by the Portuguese. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is here that I find another of Twitty’s parallels, as he explores the similarity between corn and crops already growing in Africa, stating that the similarity in taste and texture of commonly made meals made the change less jarring and helped it to become a quick staple, as well as exploring the meals made as a means of survival, to imitate familiar meals with unfamiliar ingredients. With his explanation of Corn’s journey and adaptation across the globe in mind, you can easily connect the forced removal, relocation, and adaptation of people from Africa and the same journey of Corn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitty also explores the relationship between corn and femininity, a topic we have also been exploring in my four credit. While the origin story of corn differs from tribe to tribe, the story of the three sisters, corn, beans, and squash, is the most widely known due to its relevance in farming and soil preservation. Other origin stories of Corn depict her as a motherly character, but the spirit of the divine feminine runs throughout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Food is not just a food to those who grow it, any more than yams or rice or wheat are mere sustenance to cultures of which they have been part of for centuries. The Corn Mother is life itself. Food was often expressed not as a thing in these cultures of which they have been a part for centuries. The Corn Mother is life itself.”<\/em> (pg.204)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitty also explores the double-edged sword of corn’s wide reach across the globe. As he explains, corn was introduced by the Portuguese to induce a population spike within African communities that would go on to be the majority homeland of the transatlantic slave trade. It is hard to come to terms with both the evil and the devastating sadness that comes with the weaponization of such a plant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Corn was not just going to revolutionize how Africa ate, but along with other crops, in particular cavassa, it would become just the fuel needed to spur on the prolific population growth that would be ample fertilizer for the transatlantic slave trade.” <\/em>(pg.205)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitty also demonstrates the fate of those dependent on corn for sustenance, and the many lives lost because of it. As slavery was ending, many recently free people were still in poverty, without means of stable or profitable employment were living on “meat, (corn) meal, and molasses -the 3M’s”<\/em> (pg.216). This diet over a long period of time caused mass outbreaks of Pellagra, killing many who had survived slavery and leaving others permanently sick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Corn was our mother, and sometimes she committed infanticide.” <\/em>(pg.216)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also read a chapter from The Taste Culture Reader<\/em> entitled The Breast of Aphrodite <\/em>by C. Nadia Seremetakis. The namesake of this chapter comes from the nickname of the authors favorite peach, a fruit they grew up with called Roh\u00e1kino<\/em>, also known as “the breast of Aphrodite”. Seremetakis describes how the taste of these peaches became associated with home and the season of summer, making use of colorful descriptions and visual language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was well rounded and smooth like a small clay vase, fitting perfectly<\/em> into your palm. Its interior was firm yet moist, offering a soft resistance to the teeth. A bit sweet and a bit sour, it exuded a distinct fragrance.”<\/em> (pg.297) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seremetakis describes how through the years and her many trips back to Greece, she noticed the graduate disappearance of her beloved Roh\u00e1kino, now replaced by a hybrid between the Roh\u00e1kino and the Yerm\u00e1s peaches. She mentions how, when asked about the peaches, her friends and family assumed that the Roh\u00e1kino were still out there, just not around in the market, instead focusing on how tasteless the new peaches were, stating “Nothing tastes as good as the past”<\/em> (pg.297). She draws clear connections between these peaches and the self, describing the loss of these familiar tastes, scents, and textures as “sensory displacement” and weighs different meanings and applications of nostalgia as a way to understand the social and agricultural transformation. By defining the differences between the Greek and American ideas and definitions of nostalgia Seremetakis is able to offer a new way of thinking about our food timelines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Nostalgia, in the American sense, freezes the past in such a manner as to preclude it from any capacity for social transformation in the present, preventing the present from establishing a dynamic perceptual relationship to its history. Whereas the Greek etymology evokes the transformative impact of the past as unreconciled historical experience. Does the difference between nostalgia and nostalgh\u00ed<\/em>a speak of different cultural experiences of the sense and memory? Could a diabolical encounter of the terms offer insights for an anthropology of the scenes?”<\/em> (pg.300)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as enjoying the story, I also very much enjoyed Seremetakis’ storytelling. Her wordplay and train of thought were poetic and almost lyrical in places, and I want to highlight some of my favorite quotes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The younger generation, whenever present, heard these stories as if listening to a captivating fairy tale. For me the peach had been both eaten and remembered, but for the younger generation it was now digested through memory and language.”<\/em> (pg.298)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The disappearance of Aphrodite’s peach is a double absence; it reveals the extent to<\/em> which the senses are entangled with history, memory, forgetfulness, narrative and silence. That first peach of my childhood carried with it allusions to distant epochs where the relation between food and the erotic was perhaps more explicit, named, and sacralized; a relation that although fragmented and gone underground, was carried over through the centuries by the Roh\u00e1kino, a fruit bearing myth in its form.”<\/em> (pg.298)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Is memory stored in specific everyday items that form the historicity of a culture, items that create and sustain our relationship to the historical as a sensory dimension?”<\/em> (pg.299)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A French cheese is excluded because it is produced through a specific fermentation process, one that market regulations deem a health risk. What is fermentation if not history? If not a maturation that occurred through the articulation of time and substance? Sensory premises, memories and histories are being pulled out from entire regional cultures and the capacity to reproduce social identities may be altered as a result.” <\/em>(pg.299)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When new forms and items of an emerging material culture step in between a society’s present perpetual existence and its residual socio-cultural identity, they can be tasteless because people no longer have the perceptual means for seeking identity and experience in new material forms. Because the cultural instruments for creating meaning out of material experience have been dispersed with the now discarded past sensory landscape.” <\/em>(pg.302)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing Prompt #1 Taking inspiration from the style of C. Nadia Seremetakis, describe taking a bite of a beloved food.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the longest time the only fruit I would willingly eat were apples, specifically the Red Delicious variety. Their exterior is a dark ruby-red, often with patches of light pinks, reds, and greens and speckled with a light white. We would buy them in plastic bags from the grocery store, each apple never much bigger than my first and sprinkled with grocery store rain, and my mother would put them in whichever ceramic fruit bowl currently held her fancy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’d serve them to myself sliced on a plate with a helping of cream cheese, the first bite loaded up with enough savory and sweet to satisfy my afterschool hunger. The Red Delicious is in my opinion the perfect apple texture, crisp yet still giving, making your teeth push for just a second before allowing them to pierce the skin. The flesh is notably sweet, making it the perfect pair for the savory cream cheese, the bite of the apple couples perfectly with the smooth and creamy nature of the cream cheese. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal Menu Writing <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week I spent most of my time interviewing my family about family ancestry, specifically asking questions about country of origin, family and maiden names, and sibling relationships. Talking and then summarizing better notes took me longer than I expected so I will pull back my reading next week to spend more time next week on writing and getting use out of these interviews. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I continued reading The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty, as well as two sections of The Taste Culture Reader. I left off The Cooking Gene in week four after finishing chapter nine, so I am picking up at chapter ten and probably staying with this book for the next few weeks. In … Continue reading Week 7<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodagproject-f23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}