The University of North Carolina Press

336 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 42 illus., notes, bibl., index

Cloth

ISBN  978-0-8078-3022-2

Published: May 2006

Paper

ISBN  978-0-8078-5686-4

Published: May 2006

Building Houses out of Chicken Legs

Black Women, Food, and Power

By Psyche A. Williams-Forson

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Awards & Distinctions

2006 Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize, American Folklore Society, Women’s Section

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.

About the Author

Psyche A. Williams-Forson is assistant professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Reviews

"Fascinating. . . . recommend[ed]. . . to those interested in American/African American popular culture, African American women's history, and the history of food."
--Virginia Magazine

"Valuable."
--Publishers Weekly

"Beyond the place of chicken as racial stereotype and in soul-food gatherings, Williams-Forson offers intriguing interpretations of black history, culture, and feminism."
--Booklist

"[Williams-Forson] analyzes postcards, W.P.A. photos, literature, advertisements (drawing from her own collection of racist ephemera), stand-up comedy, television and movies. She finds plenty of evidence of both racial subjugation and also a reaffirming language of sorts in African-American women's culinary talents, allowing their story to emerge despite any prevailing white propaganda. At its best, Building Houses out of Chicken Legs parallels this brave course of self-definition. . . . [And] deftly examines the tight space between degrading stereotype and cultural touchstone."
--New York Times Book Review

"Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs is not just about chickens and not just about black women; it is a broad cultural study that uses the stereotyped relationships of African Americans with chickens as a point of departure. . . . Williams-Forson probes both the contrasts and the tensions with a deft hand."
--Journal of American History

"[Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs] is notable not only for the distinctive and interesting nature of its subject matter and for shedding new light on African American history, but also for its wide appeal. Historians of many stripes–-including southern, cultural, social, culinary, and religious, to name a few–-as well as scholars in other disciplines such as Anthropology and American Studies, will find worth in this study."
--Southern Historian