Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people
of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health
legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul
itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central
African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks
made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas.
Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals, government reports on food
and diet, and interviews with more than thirty people born before 1945,
Opie reconstructs an interrelated history of Moorish influence on the
Iberian Peninsula, the African slave trade, slavery in the Americas, the
emergence of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and
the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. His grassroots approach
reveals the global origins of soul food, the forces that shaped its
development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred
among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history.
Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of
community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which
different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective
health of a community.