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Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America. By Frederick Douglass Opie. Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History. (New York: Columbia University Press, c. 2008. Pp. [xviii], 238. $24.95, ISBN 978-0-231-14638-8.)
Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue. By John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed, with William McKinney. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2008. Pp. [x], 316. $30.00, ISBN 978-0-8078-3243-1.)
Pork is the cornerstone of southern cooking. Ever since Hernando de Soto introduced the first herd of pigs to American soil in the sixteenth century, pork has factored heavily in the diet and culture of the South. These two very different books trace the pig's path through the region's culinary heritage.
Frederick Douglass Opie introduces the pig on page 3 of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, a chronicle of the foodways of the African diaspora. Drawing on previous research and a smattering of oral history interviews, Opie attempts to outline the five-hundred-year history of the foodways of black Americans, while at the same time pondering the actual meaning of soul. It is a gargantuan task, and Opie has a bit of trouble with it.
The book begins with the Atlantic slave trade. Opie discusses the creolization of cultures that eventually brought people and their food traditions to the American South and introduces one of his many definitions of soul. He writes, "[T]he African slave trade . . . would shape the African-American concept of soul: spirituality, love, patience, hard work, and pride. These were essential components of what would later become soul food" (p....