“Home was where “yenna come nyam” meant “come and eat.” I didn’t know that nyam was an African root word used throughout the diaspora. I didn’t know there were cultural reasons why we were big rice eaters, that there were African retentions in the way Grandma Sula made okra soup, in the way Granddaddy made baskets, or in the way Mr. Knowels cast his net in the river. What did I know from African retentions or diaspora?”1
Vertamae Smart Grosvenor
Foodways, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, are “the eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period.”2 Perhaps a slightly more comprehensive definition comes from Wikipedia: “In social science, foodways are the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. Foodways often refers to the intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history.”3 Each ingredient in Vertamae Smart Grosvenor’s delicious gumbo has a different history, a different way in which it ended up in the pot, bubbling and stewing together to make a mouthwatering delicious dish. The ways in which those ingredients got into the pot are foodways.
The melding of foods and foodways, the adaptability and versatility, are key characteristics of Black culinary history in the Americas; and Gullah and Geechee culinary practices are no exception. But there is something that has been more important to their foodways. Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson writes:
“Perhaps the phrase that best encapsulates Gullah cultural foodways is slow cooking because historically local denizens farmed, gardened, fished, and crabbed and then cleaned, cut, chopped, and simmered.”4
Psyche Williams-Forson, PhD, associate professor and chair of the Department of American Studies, University of Maryland College Park
The ways in which the Gullah and Geechee were tied to the land was integral to the development of their foodways, and is the crucial aspect that sets it apart from other culinary traditions. The crops the enslaved Africans of the Sea Islands planted in the ground were the same crops they had planted in the earth of Sierra Leone and other West African regions. As we will see in the coming webpages, these crops are the same crops that have been planted season after season, generation after generation, on the same Sea Islands.
The cast nets that the enslaved Africans knit to catch the bounty of sea life in the waterways around them were the same cast nets that were knit on the shores of the African continent. The skills of making and using these nets were also passed from generation to generation, as we will see in the coming page Water: Cast nets on both sides of the Atlantic. When the rest of the United States had begun getting the majority of their foods from markets and shops, the Gullah and Geechee were still sowing and reaping, fishing and hunting, in the same manner that their African ancestors had done.
“This kind of food self-sufficiency necessarily gives birth to the passing on of traditions.”5
Psyche Williams-Forson, PhD
The ingredients that Gullah and Geechee chefs today are chopping, boiling, sautéing, baking, and frying are the same ingredients their ancestors used. In the Gullah and Geechee culture, foodways becomes a sort of ritual connecting the present to the past.
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Footnotes
- Vertamae Grosvenor, Vertamae Cooks in The Americas’ Family Kitchen (San Francisco: KQED Books, 1996), 16. Available here.
- “Foodways,” Merriam-Webster, accessed March 27, 2022, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/foodways.
- “Foodways,” Wikipedia, accessed March 27, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodways.
- Psyche Williams-Forson, “Take the Chicken Out of the Box: Demystifying the Sameness of African American Culinary Heritage in the U.S.,” in Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage, eds. Ronda L. Brulotte and Michael A. Giovine (New York: Routledge, 2016), 102.
- Ibid, 102.