Jessica B. Harris on Soul Food

My recent trip to Sydney, where southern soul food is currently all the rage, inspired me to share this quote...

Fried chicken at Hartsyard, Sydney

"Soul food has been defined as the traditional African American food of the South as it has been served in black homes and restaurants around the country, but there is a wide-ranging disagreement on exactly what that food was. Was it solely the food of the plantation South that was fed to the enslaved: a diet of hog and hominy supplemented with whatever could be hunted or foraged or stolen to relieve its monotony? Was it the traditionallly less-noble parts of the pig that were fed to the enslaved, like the chitterlings and hog maws and pigs' feet, the taste for which had been carried to the North by those who left the South in search of jobs? Was it the foods that nourished those who danced at rent parties in Harlem and who went to work in the armament factories during World War II? Was it the fried chicken that was served by the waiter-carriers who hawked their wares at train stations in Virginia or the chicken that was packed in boxes and nourished those who migrated to Kansas and other parts of the West? Was it the smothered pork chop that turned up in the African American restaurants covered in rich brown gravy or the fluffy cornbread that accompanied it? 

Soul food it would seem depends on an ineffable quality. It is a combination of nostalgia for and pride in the food of those who came before ... In the 1960s, as the history of African Americans began to be rewritten with pride instead of with the shame that had previously accompanied the experience of disenfranchisement and enslavement, soul food was as much an affirmation as a diet. Eating neckbones and chitterlings, turnip greens and fried chicken, became a political statement for many" 

Harris, J.B. 2011. We Shall Not Be Moved. In H. Hughes, ed. Best Food Writing 2011. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 9-115.