Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food: Recipes, Remedies & Simple Pleasures

by Frederick Douglass Opie

Florida native Zora Neale Hurston's early twentieth-century ethnographic research and writing emphasizes the essentials of food in Florida through simple dishes and recipes.
It considers foods prepared for everyday meals as well as special occasions and looks at what shaped people's eating traditions in early twentieth-century Florida. Hurston did for Florida what William Faulkner did for Mississippi - provided insight into a state's history and culture through various styles of writing. Her collected food stories, folklore and remedies, and the related recipes food professor Fred Opie pairs with them, are essential reading for those who love to cook and eat.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cookbooks, History, Food, Food Writing, Food and Drink, Culinary

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 18, 2015

Reviews

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an interesting concept. This book was written to explain the importance of food in the writings of Zara Neale Hurston. The author explains how Hurston’s heritage, upbringing, and research experiences factor into not only her writing, but in the importance, the value and the role of food in her writing. The author, Fred Opie, is a professor of history and foodways, and the depth of his knowledge is extensive. The writing is easy and comfortable and his explanations are interspersed with recipes, anecdotes, and passages, all connected to or found in Hurston’s novels.

Opie explains ....“The term “foodways” explains why you eat and what you eat and how it changes over time.”

Food prepared for daily consumption as well as food prepared for special occasions are discussed. The manner of preparation as well as the various methods of cooking are reviewed and explained. The staples and the variety in their usage as well as the luxuries and their limited offerings are considered. Many of these topics are explained noting the link to southern life particularly in Florida where Hurston was raised and her stories often take place.

Basting, smoking, barbecuing, roasting, frying of traditional ingredients are linked to particular locations. The history of recipes, methods of cooking, and what and when to serve certain southern foods are explained.

I stumbled upon this book after reading her book Their Eyes Were watching God. The author links foods and events from Hurston’s writing to the explanations in this book. It is quite fascinating and gives real life to her stories, the events and characters. While it is often suggested that Their Eyes is a “fictional memoir”, it is clearly evident from this book that a great deal of Hurston’s life, upbringing,and experiences are portrayed in her writing.

The book is not very long, but is certainly jam packed with some great historical connections which, for me, added great depth to Hurston’s novel. I think this book, if read, does need to be read after reading at least one of Hurston’s novels, and not before. The context might be lost if read before, or would certainly not have the same impact.

There is a chapter on Hurston’s family history, and foodways, which starts in Alabama and quickly moves to Florida where her family moves to when she is quite young.

The next chapter moves on to consider Hurston’s African-American heritage. Particular foods brought from Africa, like rice, beans and yams are included in dishes with American plants like corn, squash, and sweet potatoes. Greens as a staple are noted. Without getting into all the detail, the links between all these things is clearly articulated by Opie. And then the introduction of local foods and traditions are identified. The rations provided to labourers are noted, as are the events both food related and otherwise that are the focus of Hurston’s novels.

Each chapter has plenty of historical photographs of actual events and people partaking in various food preparations going back, in some cases, 100 years.

Again recipes of the day , like dumplings, bread, soufflés,and biscuits, are provided which show the use of basic staples and simple methods. In this second chapter we hear about moonshine and bootleg beverages. Introduction of peanuts is discussed.

The third chapter moves on to folk medicine recipes, and foods used to deal with various ailments as the access and availability of medicine as we know it are not available to camp workers and plantation labourers.

The fourth chapter is all about chicken, and the role it played in the lives and events of the African Americans living and working in Florida. Again Hurston’s writings and experiences are highlighted, and although she was never recognized to the extent she deserved, she then attempted to become a chicken specialist, since she was a very good cook. Chicken was both everyday and special occasion food.

Chapter five deals with the importance of barbecuing at this time. All of these discussions are focused on life in Florida and run the gamut of basting, smoking, bbq pits, sauces.....and the culture surrounding all of this.

Even the Afterword neatly ties in the spiritual or religious heritage from the Caribbean that factors into the history and foodways.

While I’m not really doing this book justice, I have to say agin, how interesting and unusual I thought the concept was of linking the historical evolution of foods and events to the fictional books of a particular author. I will admit that I love both foodie books and memoirs and this book as well as Hurston’s Their Eyes book fit right into this mold for me....jackpot! This was a winner!

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great history of African American Floridian food with a bit of folklore. It was just the right length- I’m afraid if it were any longer it would have been dry and difficult to get through. I enjoyed the introduction to Zora Neale Hurston and look forward to reading some of her books to see what more she had to say about food and life. I would have given it five stars but the recipes included in the book are more for reference and insight rather than being usable. It would have been nice to see some current or updated recipes at the end of the book. I loved getting a glimpse into the history of one of the parts of Florida where I grew up and recommend this book to anyone interested in Floridian or culinary history.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food, professor Fred Opie combines his knowledge of history and foodways with material mined from Hurston's fictional and anthropological works to offer a delicious look at eating and food traditions in early 20th century Florida.

After opening with a chapter focusing on Hurston's life - which began in hog slaughtering season in Alabama, a practice Opie describes in detail - Opie then moves on to examining how different foods (collards, corn, peanuts, sweet potatoes, etc.) figured in Hurston's novels and explaining the origins and cultural practices associated with each dish. From there he pivots to exploring the folk remedies detailed in Hurston's anthropological work, offered with occasional insights from physicians about possible efficacy and a huge side of Don't try this at home, kids, before swinging back to close with two chapters devoted to those greatest of Southern staples: fried chicken and barbecue. Throughout, Opie scatters recipes pulled from contemporaneous cookbooks or Black-owned newspapers and photos from the state archive and Library of Congress which, while never directly related to the text, offer a glimpse at comparable Florida food practices.

As fascinated as I was by Opie's writing, particularly on food courtship practices (pro tip: go with peanuts, pigs feet, or sugar cane), I frequently wished he had dug deeper into the Central and West African influences on Floridian cuisine, though that just may be me wishing this were an academic work about a hundred pages longer. I was also hoping for more Jacksonville-specific content; as it is, we mostly get Hurston's complaints about the food in her Jax boarding school, a tantalizing and too-brief look at fried chicken as an urban entrepreneurial venture, and the history of the Diddy-Wah-Diddy, a white-owned BBQ joint which appropriated its name from a mythical land of plenty in Black folklore.

Though somewhat cursory in nature, Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food nonetheless does an excellent job of drawing attention to the importance of cuisine in both Hurston's work and in Black cultural life in Florida. While it may not completely satisfy your curiosity, it's bound to leave you hungry.

[audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's easy to forget that Zora Neale Hurston was a prolific anthropologist as well as an author, and in this book we learn just how much of her interest centered on collecting stories of Florida foodways. This dovetails nicely with the author's own extensive research into the same subject. So what you wind up with is a well-researched and sourced culinary history book, intensely focused on Florida.

I struggled a little with how much slavery and Jim Crow laws were downplayed in the book but the author opens the book with a caution that there were places in the South, post-Reconstruction, where white and Black people worked together for a common goal: not starving. For instance, never having butchered a hog, I didn't realize it was so work-intensive that it was generally a huge community event requiring at least six pigs to make the event worthwhile, and even then it was all hands on deck.

Very fascinating book, in that it restricts the scope of its focus to such a grain size that it's remarkably in-depth, and uses Hurston's work as it says: to structure such an examination and provide it richer context.

A note of warning: so many photos of dead animals, so if that's not your thing, you know, do you.

[Jill Dater · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought there’d be more usable recipes and connection to Zora Neal Hurston’s writing but I enjoyed the overview of the history of African American food in Florida. Now I need to go back and re-read some of Hurston’s work.

[Pholsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

This makes a great companion read with Zora's Their Eyes Were Watching God since it provides not only a welcomed visual of the historical period in which the novel is set, but also provides context with cultural importance in the food histories.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting stories behind these recipes and can still use them today

[Tami Chesnut · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating look at the food and the recipes from the writings of Zora Neale Hurston.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but shallow analysis of ZNH's take on foodways in Florida. Made me want fried chicken and hoppin' johns and collard greens. I plan on planting black-eyed peas now.

[Micebyliz]

I have read Hurston and I am so glad to have read this book as well.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

must read for any hurston and/or food history fans