Abstract
While there were many themes that struck me while reading Getting Something to Eat in Jackson, one that would not let me go was the idea of food as a tool of both survival and resistance. When I think of Jackson, Mississippi, I think of the South, and when I think of the South, I think of race, foodways, survival, and resistance. I think of the plantation slave system that continues to shape our lived realities as a nation to this day including how and what we eat, as well as the ways we survive and resist. I think about Black farmers and Black-owned farms. I think of the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s, I think of bus boycotts, and lunch counter sit ins, I also think about the Black Panther Party for Self-defense and their Free Breakfast program. For Black folks, food is survival and resistance.
The way that food shows up in the lives of the Black folks in the stories present in Getting Something to Eat in Jackson offers new examples of food as survival and resistance, while reminding readers of the ways that Black food and foodways are always connected to soul. Ewoodzie Jr. writes, If soul food was, as the historian Fred Opie once described, “the survival food of Black Southerners [that] became the revolutionary cuisine of bourgeoisie African Americans,” then in this same food tradition belongs flaming hot Cheetos, Jiffy cornbread, and Happy Meals, which are survival food of poor Black Southerners today. (P. 109)
Soul food conjures images of Southern cuisine traditionally cooked by African Americans. It also often conjures simultaneous images of plantation slavery and diabetes, depending on who one asks. Soul food, however, encompasses so much more. It is collard greens and fried chicken, but it is also family recipes and gossip in kitchens. What soul food looked like in Southern kitchens in 1868 Jackson varies from those now in 2022, yet Black folks still need food to survive, and can still use food as a form of resistance. I can’t help but think of the different ways that food can become resistance. Eating certain foods can be an act of resistance, just as much as abstaining from certain foods. Of course, having the agency to make the decision to do either is also important when it comes to the ways that food is a tool of resistance.
Food as a tool of survival is also complex. The Black Panther Party, for instance, recognized food as both in its free breakfast program and the demand for “bread” in the 10th point of the party platform—the right of access to food should be a basic human right, but in a world where people are hungry it is anything but. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson made me think all this and more about the idea of food as survival and resistance. Even thinking about Jiffy cornbread and hot Cheetos as soul food seems like both survival and resistance. They are tools for survival when that is all one can afford. Yet also signs of resistance when they are objects of desire for consumption, labels be damned! Soul food is a radical food tradition with deep historical roots and an unknowable future. I am excited about the directions that soul food can take, and the ways we can come to better understand the relationships between race and class through food and Southern food ways. I think there are multiple stories within Southern Black food just waiting to be told. Stories of survival and resistance came up for me while reading Getting Something to Eat in Jackson.