Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions

North American Religions Series

by Elizabeth Pérez

Before honey can be offered to the Afro-Cuban deity Ochun, it must be tasted, to prove to her that it is good. In African-inspired religions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, such gestures instill the attitudes that turn participants into practitioners. Acquiring deep knowledge of the diets of the gods and ancestors constructs adherents identities; to learn to fix the gods favorite dishes is to be seasoned into their service.In this innovative work, Elizabeth Perez reveals how seemingly trivial "micropractices" such as the preparation of sacred foods, are complex rituals in their own right. Drawing on years of ethnographic research in Chicago among practitioners of Lucumi, the transnational tradition popularly known as Santeria, Perez focuses on the behind-the-scenes work of the primarily women and gay men responsible for feeding the gods. She reveals how cooking and talking around the kitchen table have played vital socializing roles in Black Atlantic religions.Entering the world of divine desires and the varied flavors that speak to them, this volume takes a fresh approach to the anthropology of religion. Its richly textured portrait of a predominantly African-American Lucumi community reconceptualizes race, gender, sexuality, and affect in the formation of religious identity, proposing that every religion coalesces and sustains itself through its own secret recipe of micropractices. "

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Food, Religion

320 pages, Paperback

Published February 16, 2016

Reviews

[Morgan M. Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an Olorisha well-versed in the scholarly literature on Lukumi, I found this book to be such a refreshing take! Turning away from the glamorous (or, in my opinion, arduous) work of ritual and towards the "micropractices" of cooking and speech, Pérez presents a vision of how religion is "done" that is much more in line with what my elders have taught me and what I've observed over nearly a decade in the community. Highly recommended.

[Beth Quick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably a case of my expectations and the actual content not being a match more than a flaw in the work itself, but I didn't find this work particularly engaging. It is, however, a thorough ethnography.

[Alexia Palomino]

Wow! What a powerful book! Recommended to me by a friend for my syllabus and I couldn’t put it down! Such an interesting perspective on religion and the mixing of cultures