The purpose of this project is to explore the relationship between food systems and Blackness. I aim to trace how knowledge of food and food culture has circulated across Black communities, beginning with West Africa and extending through the Caribbean and the United States. This includes investigating how agricultural practices and foodways were transferred, reshaped, and preserved through the transatlantic slave trade, and examining their similarities and differences across regions.
This semester I’ve focused on reading literature that examines how the knowledge of food has moved across continents. Some of the findings included: The impact Africans have had on the regions where they disembarked; The invention of mofongo as a method of resourcefulness; The cultivation of subsistence gardens and their similarities to those mentioned in travel accounts across West and Central Africa; West African cooking traditions such as “highly spiced cooking” and their impact on American cuisine; Evidence that Africans Americans “contributed more to the diet of the poorer Whites than the poorer Whites ever had the chance to contribute to theirs.” I am in the process of creating a website to host all of this information. The website will also include recent news articles regarding food and farming in the regions I am researching.
This semester I learned a lot from my independent research. I also learned a lot from all of the Griot events I attended. I had a lot of fun meeting new people and working with the other Griot interns. This has been one of my favorite semesters at Bucknell and much of it has to do with working at the Griot.
-Da’Mirah Vinson