Selling the Myth of “Our” Food
Restaurants serve feijoada regularly across Brazil on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, or Sundays, depending on the region. It is a traditional dish of Carnaval, the largest and most important festival in Brazil, which has also been described as a performance of national solidarity. In line with the pervasive story of feijoada’s origins in enslaved people’s quarters, the dish remains associated with celebrations of African culture in Brazil, similar to representations of soul food in the United States. Feijoada is frequently served in connection with religious ceremonies in the Afro-Brazilian candomblé tradition. One legend taught that the deity Ogum instructed a priest to prepare feijoada to share with his whole community after the priest had offended the god by denying food to a supplicant. This unusual feijoada, cooked with special meat and seasonings, caused everyone who ate it to fall into a trance. Myth has become real, and feijoada is still served in places of worship today in conjunction with religious rites. Independent settlements known as quilombos, formed by runaway slaves between the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, preserved elements of West African culture. Some quilombos still exist today on land protected by Brazilian law, hosting classes in capoeira, a martial art that originated with enslaved Africans, and feasts of feijoada. Many African American tourists still travel to Northeast Brazil to discover their African roots, engaging with well-preserved cultural elements—samba (semba in Angola), feijoada, and candomblé—positioning the region as a marketplace of black tradition. One Airbnb in Rio de Janeiro sums it all up, offering a quilombo visit, samba dance party, and feijoada for just $54.22
Latin America scholar Patricia de Santana Pinho writes that such promotions of African origins have come to symbolize the Brazilian Northeast in tourism brochures and marketing campaigns, directed toward consumers outside the region and sponsored by the state government. By celebrating Bahian vendors (and by describing the “enormous black women” at Big House stoves), Gilberto Freyre triggered the spread of restaurants serving African-derived cuisine. Pinho describes Afro-Bahian themed restaurants where waitresses dress as domestic slaves and serve dishes cooked in palm oil to tourists and Bahians alike: “Gilberto Freyre amalgamated people—especially black women—with place to narrate a magical notion of Bahia.” In these representations of Africanness, the black contribution is not only food but labor; the presentations suggest that black women have a natural and innate skill for cooking, and that African-descended people exist to comfort, please, and serve patrons. Simultaneously, however, growing representations of Africa and blackness may reflect a stronger claim to Afro-Brazilian identity. Cheryl Sterling, a scholar of the African diaspora, writes, “Identity arises from what group members choose to emphasize in their cultural repertoires: by selecting stories, songs, dances, texts, and rituals based on their use value, they create new artifacts and cultural practices to meet their needs.” As a celebration of Afro-Brazilian culture (and especially when connected to candomblé), feijoada challenges the notion of racial democracy and exemplifies black resistance to hegemony.23
Hoppin’ John is at once soul food and southern food, celebrated by black and white communities alike—a tension that raises questions of ownership and representation. Sean Brock, chef of the acclaimed Charleston restaurant Husk, has described how discovering true Hoppin’ John changed the course of his career and sparked his interest in the Carolina rice kitchen. His 2014 cookbook Heritage includes a recipe for the dish, and he champions the preservation of Carolina Gold rice to achieve authentic flavor—the same rice originally planted and cooked by Africans enslaved in South Carolina. Hungry for knowledge about heirloom southern ingredients, Brock experimented with recipes and shared tasting notes and backstories with chefs in the culinary community. After culling and planting for eleven years, the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation completed the first commercial harvest for the revived species in 2011, and Brock began serving it in his restaurants to much acclaim. While Brock rightly acknowledges Africans’ contribution to rice culture in Charleston, he has also profited from the reconstruction of dishes developed by enslaved peoples. In Heritage, Brock writes, “Southern food has enough soul to transcend region.” Foodways scholar Catarina Passidomo argues that for a white man to attach “soul” to all southern food diminishes the importance of the symbol in the black community and erases the specific histories of unnamed people, presumably people of color, who invented these heritage foods.24
Brock’s restaurants and others helmed by white chefs and owners have drawn scores of tourists to Charleston, bringing attention to the city’s cuisine. In 2016, Hillary Dixler Canavan explored the influence of Gullah peoples, as descendants of West Africans enslaved in South Carolina are known, on the foodways of the Lowcountry in an article for the website Eater. She interviewed Michael Twitty and local chef and Gullah culinary ambassador BJ Dennis, who worried that attention to white-tablecloth southern revival cuisine would erase the Gullah contribution to Charleston culture and, by extension, the city’s history of enslavement. “None of the places that people go to first in Charleston are African American owned,” Michael Twitty told Canavan, adding that white chefs are guilty of “projecting ownership” onto black foodways at the expense of those “marginalized and exploited.” Charleston insiders responded quickly and energetically, defensive of criticisms from regional outsiders. On his blog Afroculinaria, Twitty invited Brock to join him in preparing a meal together, speaking frankly, and posing difficult questions. A conversation between the two men followed, prompting Twitty to write, “The Southern path to salvation is within itself, and inasmuch as saving and healing can take place, so will go it’s [sic] original sins and with them the ability of America to truly fulfill itself.” Another public discussion followed the Eater backlash between John T. Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance and Nigerian-born chef and activist Tunde Wey. In a coauthored essay for Oxford American, Wey accused Edge of endorsing the appropriation of black food in the South and challenged him to cede his voice and privilege so that African Americans might claim their culinary heritage and contributions for themselves. Leaders of the New Southern Food Movement, many of whom are writers and chefs of color, have centered questions of power, authority, and appropriation in conversations about the future of the region’s foodways.25
While the media has primarily centered efforts to revive heirloom ingredients led by white men—such as Chef Sean Brock, Glenn Roberts of grain producer Anson Mills, and Tennessee ham and bacon master Allan Benton—African American culinarians are demanding recognition for their roles in the development and evolution of southern food, from farm and kitchen to history books. Kevin Mitchell, a recent graduate student and a Charleston chef, argues that a celebration of contemporary southern food should include homage to those who came before—pioneering black cooks and caterers such as Eliza Seymour Lee and Nat Fuller. Mitchell writes, “These chefs, either freed or enslaved . . . laid the foundation for the way we eat, not only in Charleston but throughout the South.”26
Charleston’s culinary scene reflects a larger shift in the region to challenge mainstream white depictions of southern food with more complete narratives that acknowledge and elevate black contributions. Michael Pollan’s 2013 book Cooked spotlights North Carolina pitmaster Ed Mitchell, who spearheaded a campaign to bring back older breeds of pigs and rear them humanely, without hormones or antibiotics. Julian Rankin’s 2018 biography Catfish Dream told the story of Ed Scott Jr., the first black owner of a catfish plant in the United States, who deep-skinned his fish before the industry designated such prime cuts “delacata.” Brother-sister team Matthew and Althea Raiford are sixth-generation farmers on Gilliard Farms, their family’s organic, sustainable farm in Brunswick, Georgia; their work focuses attention on the profound agricultural knowledge of black farmers that allowed for the development of southern food.27