| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 317 pages) : illustrations |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Series |
Black women writers series.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-302) and index. |
| Contents |
We called ourselves waiter carriers -- "Who dat say chicken in dis crowd" : Black men, visual imagery, and the ideology of fear -- Gnawing on a chicken bone in my own house : cultural contestation, Black women's work, and class -- Traveling the chicken bone express -- Say Jesus and come to me : signifying and church food -- Taking the big piece of chicken -- Still dying for some soul food? -- Flying the coop with Kara Walker -- Epilogue : from train depots to country buffets. |
| Summary |
Chicken--both the bird and the food--has played multiple roles in the lives of African American women from the slavery era to the present. It has provided food and a source of income for their families, shaped a distinctive culture, and helped women define and exert themselves in racist and hostile environments. Psyche A. Williams-Forson examines the complexity of black women's legacies using food as a form of cultural work. While acknowledging the negative interpretations of black culture associated with chicken imagery, Williams-Forson focuses her analysis on the ways black women have forged their own self-definitions and relationships to the "gospel bird." Exploring material ranging from personal interviews to the comedy of Chris Rock, from commercial advertisements to the art of Kara Walker, and from cookbooks to literature, Williams-Forson considers how black women arrive at degrees of self-definition and self-reliance using certain foods. She demonstrates how they defy conventional representations of blackness and exercise influence through food preparation and distribution. Understanding these complex relationships clarifies how present associations of blacks and chicken are rooted in a past that is fraught with both racism and agency. The traditions and practices of feminism, Williams-Forson argues, are inherent in the foods women prepare and serve. |
| Access |
Use copy Restrictions unspecified MiAaHDL |
| Reproduction |
Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2011. MiAaHDL |
| System Details |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
| Processing Action |
digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve MiAaHDL |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Chickens -- Social aspects.
|
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Chickens. |
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Social aspects. |
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Meat -- Symbolic aspects.
|
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Meat. |
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African American women -- Food.
|
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African American women. |
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Food. |
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African American women -- Social conditions.
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African American women -- Social conditions. |
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African American cooking.
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African American cooking. |
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Cooking (Chicken)
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Cooking (Chicken) |
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Food habits -- United States.
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Food habits. |
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United States. |
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Food preferences -- United States.
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Food preferences. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Williams-Forson, Psyche A. Building houses out of chicken legs. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, ©2006 0807830224 9780807830222 (DLC) 2005035088 (OCoLC)62762178 |
| ISBN |
9780807877357 (electronic book) |
|
0807877352 (electronic book) |
|
0807830224 (cloth ; alkaline paper) |
|
080785686X (paperback ; alkaline paper) |
|
9780807830222 |
|
9780807856864 |
|
