Reviewed by:

• Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning by Rafia Zafar
• Ashley Rose Young

In the late nineteenth century, Black community members in Austin, Texas, enjoyed tables laden with barbecue, fried catfish and chicken, cornbread, cakes, and ripe watermelon to celebrate Juneteenth. These foods—their ingredients and preparation—embody generations of culinary traditions and the ingenuity created and enacted by Black cooks. They have importance far beyond sustaining the body. In Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning, Rafia Zafar demonstrates the power of food to feed both the body and soul of Black community members as they fought, and continue to fight, oppressive and violent conditions within the United States.

In this book, Zafar presents seven case studies of Black authors using food as a mechanism of empowerment. She aims to provide an alternative understanding of Black culinary history and culture that emphasizes the long tradition of using food to uplift and celebrate Black communities while at the same time defying and breaking down harmful racial stereotypes. The chapters highlight many kinds of literary sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including slave narratives, hospitality manuals, cookbooks, memoirs, and novels, among others.

This monograph builds on foundational scholarship in Black culinary history by authors such as Judith Ann Carney, Jessica B. Harris, and Rebecca Sharpless and can be placed in conversation with recent works by Marcia Chatelain, Kelley Fanto Deetz, and Kelly Kean Sharp that examine the agency embedded in food labor and entrepreneurship. Zafar’s work is [End Page 158] not a history of African Americans in the kitchen but rather a meditation on the meanings of food. Zafar’s opening chapter on Black men’s hospitality books articulates a close reading of three published works that go beyond the literal to reveal the Black entrepreneurs’ advice on how to navigate interracial relationships. Particularly compelling is her analysis of Tunis Campbell’s Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide (1848); she argues that hospitality work established Black men’s credibility, enabling them to occupy public roles as cultural tastemakers. Zafar’s fifth chapter is equally persuasive, contending that Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and Carole and Norma Jean Darden participated in a “culinary Black Reconstruction” in the post–civil rights era through the publication of their cookbooks (p. 57). Zafar notes that in Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family (New York, 1978), the Darden sisters transcribe, catalog, and share historic recipes to reclaim their Black heritage and build a new Black identity around it.

In the subsequent chapter, Zafar makes a similar observation of Edna Lewis’s cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking (New York, 1976). This chapter, however, strays somewhat from the rest of the book as Zafar draws comparison between Lewis’s work and that of Alice B. Toklas, who wrote a self-titled cookbook delineating her experiences as a white American living abroad with her partner, famed writer Gertrude Stein. The juxtaposition of Lewis’s and Toklas’s work is somewhat jarring in a book that otherwise privileges and foregrounds the writings of Black authors. That being said, Zafar’s exploration of cookbooks as elegy, or a literary form that memorializes or mourns the loss of a person or place, is thoughtful and thought-provoking. Zafar questions the genre’s historical dominance by white men and encourages a more creative, inclusive study of elegy that incorporates cookbooks authored by women.

Through these case studies, Zafar accomplishes her goal of sharing an alternative perspective on the culinary history of Black communities in the United States, one that has emerged at a pivotal moment in modern U.S. history. Today, both scholars and the broader public are looking to the past to understand the diverse ways Black intellectuals and professionals have fought for equality. Zafar’s work is a testament to the pivotal role of food in this effort.

审核人：

• 尊重食谱： Rafia Zafar撰写的非裔美国人的餐食和寓意
• 阿什莉·罗斯·杨（Ashley Rose Young）

十九世纪末期，德克萨斯州奥斯汀市的黑人社区成员在餐桌旁享用烧烤，炸cat鱼和鸡肉，玉米面包，蛋糕和成熟的西瓜，庆祝十六月的生日。这些食物（包括其成分和制备方法）体现了烹饪传统的代代相传，也体现了黑人厨师的创造力和创造力。它们的重要性远不止于维持身体。拉菲·扎法（Rafia Zafar）在《致敬的食谱：非裔美国人的饮食和意义》中展示了食物的力量，既可以喂养黑人社区成员的身体和灵魂，又可以在美国境内继续战斗，压迫和暴力。

在本书中，Zafar提出了七个黑人作家的案例研究，这些黑人作家使用食物作为赋权机制。她的目的是提供对黑人烹饪历史和文化的另一种理解，强调长期以来使用食物来提升和赞美黑人社区的传统，同时又在反抗和打破有害的种族刻板印象。这些章节重点介绍了19世纪和20世纪的各种文学资源，包括奴隶叙事，款待手册，食谱，回忆录和小说等。

此专着基于朱迪思·安·卡尼，杰西卡·B·哈里斯和丽贝卡·夏普莱斯等作家在黑人烹饪史上的基础学术研究，可以与玛西亚·夏特琳，凯利·凡托·迪兹和凯利·基恩·夏普的最新著作进行探讨。嵌入食品劳动力和企业家精神的机构。Zafar的作品[End 158]不是非洲裔美国人在厨房里的历史，而是对食物含义的沉思。扎法尔（Zafar）在黑人男性的待客之书的开篇中明确表达了对三本已发表著作的仔细阅读，这些著作超出了字面意义，揭示了黑人企业家关于如何解决种族关系的建议。她对突尼斯·坎贝尔的酒店老板，侍应生和管家的分析尤其引人注目'指南（1848）；她认为，款待工作树立了黑人的信誉，使他们能够担当起文化品味制造者的公共角色。Zafar的第五章同样具有说服力，认为Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor和Carole和Norma Jean Darden通过出版他们的食谱参与了后民权时代的“烹饪黑人重建”（第57页）。Zafar指出，在《勺面包和草莓酒：家庭的食谱和回忆》（纽约，1978年）中，达顿姐妹抄录，编目和分享历史性食谱，以恢复其黑人遗产并在其周围建立新的黑人身份。

在随后的章节中，扎法尔对埃德娜·刘易斯（Edna Lewis）的食谱《乡村烹饪的味道》进行了类似的观察。（1976年，纽约）。然而，本章与本书的其余部分有所不同，因为Zafar在Lewis的作品与Alice B. Toklas的作品之间进行了比较，后者写了一部同名的食谱，描述了她作为美国白人与同伴，著名作家一起生活在国外的经历。格特鲁德·斯坦（Gertrude Stein）。刘易斯和托克拉斯的作品的并置在书中有些刺耳，否则，该书将特权和前景视为黑人作家的作品。话虽这么说，扎法尔对菜谱的探索是挽救思想或发人深省的，挽歌是挽救或哀悼一个人或一个地方丧葬的一种文学形式。Zafar质疑白人在该类型音乐中的历史优势地位，并鼓励对挽歌进行更具创造性的，包容性的研究，其中要纳入女性创作的食谱。

通过这些案例研究，Zafar实现了她的目标，即对美国黑人社区的烹饪历史分享另一种观点，这种观点是在美国近代历史的关键时刻出现的。如今，学者和广大公众都在回顾过去，以了解黑人知识分子和专业人士为实现平等而奋斗的各种方式。Zafar的工作证明了食品在这一努力中的关键作用。