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Showing posts from April 1, 2018

Forkways #29: Gullah Food Traditions

Gullah culture and cuisine is about the intersection of folk stories and foodways and the exploration of these people and their cuisine both through and beyond their myths. The Sea Islands off the coast of many southern states hold a culture, linguistics, and history all their own. Each land has grains of stories that are sunk deep into the ground, the kind of stories that build a person. Enslaved people became disconnected with their homeland, they were forced to find opportunities to thrive in their new environment. These outer islands are relatively isolated and provide the possibility of a preserved culture. But how do we respect the culture, oral tradition, and history of these people without making them wear the dress of the noble savage. The gullah people have been studied and examined but remain relatively unknown in contemporary culture. Are they unimportant or overlooked? The distinctions between the two can be hard to determine. What makes food tradition