Signifying a Lot: African American Cookbooks of the 1970s
Zafar, Rafia. “The Signifying Dish: Autobiography and History in Two Black Women’s Cookbooks.” Feminist Studies 25:2 (Summer, 1999), 449-469.
1st Edition cover of Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine
In “The Signifying Dish: Autobiography and History in Two Black Women’s Cookbooks,” Rafia Zafar analyzes two African-American cookbooks from the 1970s contending that, in different ways, they offer important social history, autobiography, and political engagement. Zafar begins by discussing some historical background, including stereotypes against which cookbook authors had to define themselves and earlier examples of cookbooks by African American women and the precedent they set for autobiographical, historical, and political content within this genre; she then compares Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine and Vibration Cooking as contemporary examples of this tradition. The author’s purpose is to examine how two contemporary authors engage the genre in complex ways in order to demonstrate that these cookbooks have “signifying”
practices that extend beyond food and that dispel the myth that African American food culture is monolithic.
Vibration Cooking Cover (1970)
The article was published in Feminist Studies and the author is addressing feminist and African American scholars interested in women’s autobiography and history.
Interesting Excerpts
In one section of the article, Zafar discusses the different attitudes toward the tradition of serving Hoppin’ Johns on New Years Day.
Check out Vertamae’s recipe for Hoppin’ Johns and listen to her discuss the history of the dish.
Contemporary Connections
A Date with a Dish (2013)
Race still signifies in food and cookbook publishing today. In 2012, the Chicago Tribune published an article about the underrepresentation of Black chefs, which PBS has followed up on in this profile of 15 top African American Chefs. A quick check into recent cookbook publishing in this arena revealed A Date with a Dish: Classic African American Recipes, first published by Freda DeKnight in 1948, then later as The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish in 1962. The picture at left is from the latest republishing of the cookbook in 2013. Compare the covers of these two editions, to the covers of the books discussed by Zafar above.