Black foodways and places: the didactic epistemology of food memories in the WPA narratives

This article examines the ways that African American interviewees remembered and recounted the foodways under slavery. It explores the significance of these memories, and shows that their telling was deliberately structured to act as a pedagogical message to younger members of the black community, thus crafting a place for themselves as holders of historical memory. Though problematic and requiring sensitive reading, the WPA narratives of six states provide a rich source material for understanding the epistemological power of the remembrance of places of food consumption in black culture under slavery and beyond. Deliberate silences within the narratives reflect the necessity for the interviewees to protect themselves and their families in the still hostile atmosphere of the South of the 1930s.