TORKHANI!

Imne!

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The promise of the city !

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African American Foodways !
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The different documents insist on how food, former recipes, the way of eating and

the growth of food can remind African Americans heritage and history. Food became a
political mean to clarify African Americans heritage, it can also be used to remind the black
culture and eventually to gather people. These multiple writings convey a different image
of the history of black people that we use to hear. Despite the controversies and injustices
about discrimination that the authors deal with, most of the documents give a positive
image of food in African American culture and history. In Recipes for History, the National
Council of Negro Womens Five historical cookbook, the author shows how the different
cookbooks remind black people history and heritage.!
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Bowers work points out how black people had to innovate and find strategies to eat

in hard living conditions. This document is really relevant and interesting because it allows
to refute all the stereotypes about food, slaves and black people. The author reveals to
what extent the food was diverse and different from what we could think. Moreover, even if
this document insists on the tough living conditions, people who were starving and children

who were only eating once a day, it shows that cooking and eating was also real pleasure
and a way to gather people. !

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In After Forty Acres, Food security urban agriculture and black citizenship, Vivian N.

Halloran deals with food security and how to provide sufficient, safe and nutritious food to
everybody. It also emphasizes the positive effects of the growth of food in ones own home
space and how food can help to gather people. Different organizations are involved to
provide this food, such as the World Heath Organisation.

It also insists on African

Americans farmers efforts to promote food justice all around the country.!
Food became a political way to struggle against injustices and inequalities. It also became
a way for African Americans to reclaim their historical roots. The author points out that
celebrities but also politicians ( Allen, Twitty or Obama ) strongly support this will of AfricanAmericans.

Thus, we can noticed to what extent urban agriculture is in fact related to

social and historical issues. Moreover, the author shows through Will Allen, the power
of food, how it can gather people. In an interview, Twitty also insists on the positive effects
of food on communities All that oppression hurt us in the long run because it divorced us
from the land, it divorced us from nature, and through food we can reconnect with that and
begin to repair those links. !
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In Domestic Restaurants, Foreign Tongues , Audrey Russek

deals with a

controversy which happened during the sixties, before the end of the Jim Crow laws. This
event strengthened discrimination toward African Americans people : A white waitress
refused to serve a black politician man and his driver in a restaurant. !
This document shows how public spaces as restaurants reinforced racism and
segregation.!
What I found interesting and relevant in this document, is that through the different
controversies in restaurants and public spaces, we can noticed that all black people were
not considered the same way. If they were foreigners, they were less discriminated than

native African Americans. There was a real hierarchy between black people, ( that still
exist today) which strongly reinforce discrimination and segregation in the whole country. !

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