Transcript: "An Unusual Feast: Gumbo and the Complex Brew of Black Religion" With Derek Hicks

Chris: Food sustains physical life and as such it is of critical importance to each of us. Some in the country have an abundance, hunger or food and security [inaudible] and others, in which group we find ourselves determines much of our current existence. What we eat also touches on other aspects of our lives besides need: celebrations, emotional comfort, health, family traditions and connections or breaking bread with others. For the purposes of this podcast series, we are interested in uncovering and understanding the connections between religion and food in the United States. What are they, what do they mean and how significant are they?
 
To do a deep dive into just one aspect of this fascinating and meaningful subject, we have as our guest Derek Hicks, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University's Divinity School. Dr. Hicks teaches and researches broadly in the areas of African American religion, religion in North America, Race the body, Religion and Food, Ways, theory and method in the study of Religion, Black and Womanist Theologies and Cultural Studies. Dr. Hicks is the author of the book Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition and is currently working on a second monograph entitled Feeding Flesh and Spirit: Religion, Food, and the Saga of Race in Black America. He also contributed chapters for the book Blacks and Whites and Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions.

For our discussion today, we are looking at his chapter "Gumbo and the complex brew of Black religion from the book Religion, Food, and Eating in North America, edited by Benjamin Zeller, Marie Dallam, Reid Nelson and Nora Rubel.
 
I am confident that today's podcast will help us better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle is to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purpose is in the world. We encourage our listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the sign up tab.
 
Derek, thank you so much for being with us today.


Derek: It is wonderful to be here. Thank you.


Chris: First, and I think your answer here will help our listeners frame the discussion that we are going to have. Why and how did you develop a scholarly interest in the intersection of food and religion?


Derek: That is a great question and one, I will say, that I tripped into it and I was pushed along further into it by one of the editors you mentioned of the book Religion, Food and Eating in North America. And that was the one Nora Rubel who in a conversation said, "You know, I noticed that you talk about Black people as a Gumbo people." I had given a lecture and she saw it on my CV and she said "Could you say more about that?" and I talked about the way I theorized the gumbo as a metaphor for understanding the complexities of Black life, but also understanding a better way to think about diversity within theological education. I think that is what that lecture did for many years ago. And she said "Well, have you thought more substantively about how that metaphor relates to food culture in African-American life?" And I said, in fact, you know, I am starting to develop ideas about that. So that is how it came about. Um, and as I was thinking about it, I started thinking about the ways in which um, my studies in Black religion and coming of age in a house, uh, led by my Louisiana grandmother, uh, just how much food intersected with the spirit in my house, how food intersected with how she articulated values of of being Black, coming of age in the Jim Crow South, uh, her migration narrative, there was always food and faith. And then on our front porch when she would feed individuals, literally feed individuals her gumbo every late December, early January on the front porch. She would tell stories of her faith and how her faith in God had brought her and her family through so much as they would be sloping on gumbo and cracking crab legs. And so, I realized the extent to which I had been tutored, right, in both of these seemingly oddly paired cultural productions. And when I started sitting down putting pen to paper or stroking the keys on the laptop for that chapter, I realized that there was a convergence here between foodway studies and religious studies that I wanted to explore a little bit deeper. And ultimately, that has become a fuller monograph that I am drawing to a close on.


Chris: Okay. Well, thank you for that uh, genesis of your chapter. And now your book it is very helpful sort of to understand the author's background there. I think maybe the following, what I picked out of your chapter, might shed some light. Maybe you can talk to it. You wrote this at the beginning of your chapter "Refusing my native Louisiana and grandmother's New Year's Day gumbo and black-eyed peas or even her sweet potato pie prompted many to question my blackness." What did you mean there? Tell us that story.


Derek: Well, um, I grew up in-- her name is Sadie Lucille Dean. I grew up in and she's still living in that house in Los Angeles, South Central Los Angeles Watts, uh and she's ninety-two years old and still fusses at me on the phone. I grew up in a house where Sadie cooked and anybody who knows a southern grandmother, Black grandmother's cooking knows that when they cook they go all in. Um, but I did not grow up liking a lot of the things that I like now, so I did not have a taste for black-eyed peas or greens for that matter, collards or mustards or turnips. I did not have a taste for okra uh, and my grandmother did an okra-based brew in her gumbo. And while I kind of like gumbo for some of its aspects, I did not like shrimp and I did not like crab and therefore I did not eat much gumbo, um, as well. So it is kind of ironic that I would end up kind of not only deeply engaging food, but I would have my own, cultivate my own love for sharing it and cooking it now to the point about my blackness being questioned, uh, culturally within the African-American tradition. We do this thing called, uh, we would call it checking your black card. If I were to say who makes the best sweet potato pie and your family and you respond to me and say "I do not even like sweet potato pie." You know, that makes a lot of Black people gasp and swoon. How could you not like sweet potato pie? Because all Black folks supposed to like sweet potato pie and I grew up not liking it nor do I like it now. So, somebody out there listening to this is pulling my Black card or if, you know, if someone makes a reference to, uh, any cultural production in Black life that folks are supposed to know. It could come from a television show like Martin or making reference to a hip-hop lyric in front of another person and if they do not know it, you say "You know, I got to question whether or not you are legitimately Black." So it is a kind of way that we poke fun at each other to legitimate our Blackness.


Chris: Okay. Thank you. What do you-- you mention this before. You had been calling Black people "gumbo people" and that is your title: Gumbo and the complex brew of Black religion. Can you give us a quick description of that title? Why you chose it and what you mean by the Black people being a gumbo people?


Derek: Certainly.


Chris: Maybe that would help us.


Derek: Yeah. So, so, the full title-- let me make sure I did, um, I am looking at the book as well. Yes. Yes. Yes. The full title is "An Unusual Feast" and the subtitle is "Gumbo and the complex brew of Black religion."


Chris: Thank you.


Derek: And so what I am getting at there is-- actually that is a quote from someone uh, back in the eighteen hundreds or so, who observed the uh, the coming together, the fellowship around the table of Black people that he entitled "An Unusual Feast". And uh, for him, you know, it was different. It was something. It was complex. It was vibrant. It was other. It was foreign to him in his observance. And when I think about gumbo at its best, that is what it is. It is complex. It is introducing different elements that uh, coalesce in this soup, but not quite soup stew, but not quite stew like dish where you can pick out each of those elements individually and yet they co-mingle in one- as one pot of something that when you taste it, you know distinctively it is gumbo, and yet when you taste each element you can pick that out as well.
And so, and uh, when we think about the construction of gumbo, we think about uh, you know, the vegetables, the meats and then this thing called the rue where you have to mix it and the rue becomes almost the soul of the pot of gumbo as you created. And so when I think about the complex construction of gumbo and think about the beauty of it as all of these vibrant elements that come together. My grandmother would tell stories of her grandmother on the plantation where gumbo consisted of whatever anyone from around a, you know, square mile or round or someone on the different families on the plantation what have and bring together and one person would put it all in the pot and would cook it up and brew it for the entire community. And so, it is this complex food, complex dish shall we say that brings all of these wonderful ingredients together uh, and the beauty of it is in its complexity. And so, when I think about Black life in its totality, when I think about Black religion as a cultural production and cultural form within the context of a larger context of African-American life, I think... when I think of it at its best, I think of its complexity.


Chris: Okay, all right. Fair enough. Moving on here. In the section about the social and cultural structures of eating and preparing foods within the Black community, you write that "The uniqueness of the convergence of eating and religion in the process of forging community and forming collective identity in African American life gives rise to a distinct cuisine and religiosity both aimed at mending a wounded community." Would you elaborate a bit on that, Derek?


Derek: Sure, sure. And that quote becomes really the stuff of the book that I am writing now. What I am saying there is, on some level, when I think about the construction of the Black Faith tradition, I think about it within the context of enslavement and how-- what we find in that space and that experience are what I call "origins of improvisation" that we find within the context of
of uh, the kind of blossoming of the Black Faith tradition. As folks, we are trying to make ways out of no way as we call it or trying to make sense of the absurd living conditions as folks who were in bondage. What I have realized is on a similar level, African Americans were constructing a cuisine that they themselves could utilize for their own sustenance and nourishment, um, their own plantations. And so, in the first chapter of the book for example, I call it the bible and the pig, origins of improvisation in the construction of Black religion and Black food. What I am saying is instead of thinking about black people as just making do with the scraps that they would receive um, either it being an interpretation of the bible that said that you were endowed by God to be enslaved or whether they received uh, the less choice cuts of the pig. They did more than make do and I have to give credit to one of my dear colleagues, friends and mentors, [inaudible] and who really changed my thinking around this idea of making do and recasting this idea in terms of brilliance of improvisation within the Black faith and Black culinary traditions.
And so, what I am saying there is what they are ultimately getting at is creating something that not just literally fed their material flesh, but fed their souls and allowed them to articulate their meanings and humanities and form their identities through the construction of a religious life and a culinary culture.


Chris: Okay. Now related to that is another question I want to ask. Um, you later wrote in the book "Black families will often engage in heated debates about the legitimacy of sacred culinary dishes, like sweet potato pie, greens, collard or mustard, macaroni and cheese or gumbo." Why is that? Why are those arguments there?


Derek: Right. Uh, those tend to be some of the most fun arguments and you know, we could put air quotes on arguments, right? But most fun engagements around Black tables at Thanksgiving and Christmas and the like when the family comes together. But I think there is something even deeper in this process, in this way of thinking about those debates. In the second chapter of the book, I call it-- I talked about the ways in which African Americans have performed their customs of religion in culinary cultures. And I make the argument that they are performing them with the expressed purpose of making the wounded flesh whole, right? So they are responding to the absurd. They are dealing with the struggles of degradation and through food and through religion, they are able to make themselves home. But part of that process is the performance of these traditions whether that performance is the performance that they drew from or learned in the south and carried with them to the west or to the north, where they would have to re-perform those things in these new, you know, what some would consider Canaan lands of migration. And those migration dynamics bring with them these debates over legitimacy in terms of the way folks worship and the way folks cook. And so, when you take someone out of-- in the case of my family, you take my grandmother who for the first twenty or so years of her life lived in the deep south of Louisiana and um, had to, as a young child, help her grandmother who was a domestic, cleaning the homes of white people in their small town of Colfax, Louisiana. My grandmother after school would have to go help her grandmother clean these homes and she had to honor the protocols and the customs of the South in that day, which meant that she had to enter and exit the back doors and take and make meals in the back porches of the homes that they would serve. And so, my grandmother was kind of groomed and conditioned in the South and so when she would leave that space and go to her own home, there was a way of doing things. There was a way of thinking about things and faith and food were always there to help mitigate the struggles that they would have to endure by way of discrimination and racism on the other side of the railroad tracks. And so, as she grew and she migrated to the West she carried with her those ways of doing those traditions, um, but as my advisor Anthony would always say, cultural memory is fragile. And so, when you carry those cultural memories from the place where they were born to these new places in the north and the south, the argument I am making is that sometimes there is some cultural slippage and then uh, Black people love to engage in these debates as to whether or not you have slipped too much culturally and maybe you are not authentically making the greens like you think you are. And so, it becomes a fun way of engaging what we might say the real is.


Chris: Okay. That is very, um, very beautifully put, Derek. Thank you for that explanation. Also in the same section you write "Contemporary struggles with cultural contact in Black food life are connected to foodstuff rationing practices of planters and slaveholders who gave slaves what they considered the less desirable cuts of meat ." Tell us more about this. You mentioned it briefly a few minutes ago, but can you paint the picture here of of uh, of that part of Black food and its origins.


Derek: So, you know, one of the most fascinating things that uh, have been running across in my research, especially for that first chapter is the extent to which food allowed for enslaved people to actually lay claim to aspects of agency. I had not known before that. Um, so there are these examples, for example, of enslave people who worked uh, as required uh, for plantation life but then also were able to take a small plot of land and grow their own gardens. Some of them would even be able to sell their wares what they planted at, uh, you know, in town as it were and uh, allow themselves certain uh, resources through the selling of their own uh, vegetables or whatever they produced in the garden. And so there is something to be said about rethinking our understanding. We um, we are identifying our minds around what Black people were and were not able to do in plantations. It is not solely that they were bound to everything that the master uh, required of them but in some instances, through their uh, productions of culture, in this case food productions. They were able to make certain demands that manifested themselves in certain forms of agency. And so, uh, I think about the example of the gardens but also think about the examples of rationed. Uh, my research has shown at different points where enslaved people would literally debate and offer push back to uh, the planters who would want to offer the ration for-- the weekly ration on a particular day. Let us just call it Monday, uh, which was perhaps easier for the planter uh, and you have enslaved people pushing back and saying "No, we actually prefer our rations at the end of the week." Why? Because what that afforded them was to have their more choice options available to them just after worship on Sunday. And so, they took very seriously this idea of having the best options to be associated with their worship of the God that they served. And so I think, um, these become examples where even as they were offered, as I mentioned and as you quoted, less choice, options or less choice cuts of meat they were able to (a) make demands that afforded them more opportunity for agency and pleasure within the larger framework of a really, uh, challenging situation and deplorable situation of enslavement. But also it allowed them the space to create and to, as I say, utilize this kind of jazz like improvisational spirit that created not only a cuisine but in the midst of that created a religious culture uh, where they could as uh, Toni Morrison so eloquently, um, writes through the character, uh, the religious character Baby Suggs Halle, they created a space where they can love their flesh and love it hard. And so I think that um, aspect of the construction of religion in food or culinary culture of Black life is one that needs to be foregrounded even more.


Chris: Right. So, is it fair to say that the enslaved found some agency in both their food and their religion?


Derek: Absolutely.


Chris: And the other places, those were two primary places where they could express themselves, create things or ancestry.

[crosstalk]


Derek: Yeah. And they were not the soul too, right? There, uh, there were other modes of cultural production that um, Black people were involved in uh, during the antebellum period. But um, those two modes, religion and food, became really kind of vibrant ways um, to express a complex agency, complex-- and to kind of highlight a complex creativity um, that gave them-- that not only empowered them but gave them voice, right? So, when I think about Black religion and Black food, I also think about language, right? So they cultivate it as they were literally cultivating uh, these productions of culture. They were creating languages around these cultural uh, forms and those languages in some ways become distinctive and they are associated with an oral tradition, which has um, intimate connections with West African Yoruba-based or Orisha-based traditions as well. And so, when you think about what is being transferred from person to person, from generation to generation, it is not necessarily transferred in the medium that we think of, you know, written down. Some of it was but you are also talking about people who were largely barred from being able to learn to read and write in English. And so, uh, what you had was an oral tradition of folks who were uh, transferring this wealth of tradition and knowledge from person to person that still holds to this day and even with the fragility of cultural memory, you still had rudiments of very important aspects of life transferred for generations. And so, um, that is kind of where I am getting at.


Chris: One of my last questions quotes you writing about this oral tradition and you say something like uh, you noticed almost no Black Baptist Church without heavily used kitchen and it is also-- it would also be inappropriate for anyone to break out a cookbook because these recipes are orally transmitted. So, is that true you saw heavily used kitchens but no cookbooks?


Derek: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So, so, two stories there. One, I went to a funeral of a dear, dear friend of my grandmother's who had also migrated from the south, uh, I think they had migrated from Alabama there in Mississippi, uh, was a neighbor to my grandmother for sixty-five years. And at her funeral, we celebrated and as you were leaving the lengthy funeral, on your way to uh, the burial site, to the cemetery, they gave you a plate of food, actually a styrofoam container of food. And in that styrofoam container was like a slice of ham, maybe a slice of turkey or a piece of chicken, uh, a little bit of fruit and maybe some potato salad. Now, I was there with someone else who was not used to this practice and said, "Oh this is how they are feeding us." I said "No, no, no, this is just the "get you by" food. The repast will be when we come back to this place." And she was like, "Really?" I said, "Oh, yeah." So when we came back, it was an entire spread, right? And so, you literally had devoted at least four hours of your day to the going home celebration, which is what we would articulated in the Black Baptist Church, of this stalwart champion in our community and part of that was not just saying goodbye and weeping, but also celebrating life, celebrating what God had done in and through that life and then eating both on your way to bury uh, the flesh and uh, or the mortal flesh as we would call it and feasting when you came back. And so, there is a really important element that links worship, that links religious ideology, that links religious expression in the Black Faith tradition. Two, the consumption of food in the Black Faith tradition. And when you got back, yes, there were-- there-- you knew that nobody was in that kitchen cooking from a cookbook. They were cooking from memory, which gets me to my second story. The first time I ever made gumbo was in 2009 and I called uh, my Uncle in law who had learned to make gumbo in New Orleans and I said "Hey, could you dictate for me? Could you send me your recipe?" That is what I said. He said "I do not have a recipe." He said just dictate what I tell you. And so I wrote down all these this recipe essentially. I concocted a recipe from what he said. I get off the phone, I make it, it was terrible. It just- it just- it just did not flow right. It was not right, and I was really strictly going by something that he was trying to articulate from his brain, but that brain he was trying to connect to his heart simultaneously and really, when he makes the gumbo it is all from his heart. So, in 2010, happened to be in Houston, he calls me and says "Hey, I am about to make the gumbo. Do you want to come by and observe?" and I said yes. There was nothing written. I just observed. I watched I felt. I involved myself. I engaged. I inquired. I listened. And the next year, the gumbo was on a track for being much much better because it has improved over the years and that is all connected to this kind of lack of structure and order and really an embrace of the spirit of improvisation of the jazz like expression in the oral tradition. Uh, even so much as when I told my grandmother years later, I was on the phone with my grandmother as I was mixing my rue, which is a long arduous task. And my grandmother says "How much butter do you put in your rue?" I said, "Oh I do not put butter in it. I only use uh, oil and um, and flour" and she said, "Oh I put a little butter in my rue. You can't get it darker unless you put a little butter, but you you don't want to burn that butter" and that year I added butter not knowing that my grandmother used butter and I said, "Why didn't you ever tell me?" She said "Oh, I thought I did. I thought you already knew" But that is the way the oral tradition works. It is beautiful in its uh, lack of convention.


Chris: We are talking with Derek Hicks, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University's Divinity School, author of the chapter, An Unusual Feast: Gumbo and the complex brew of Black religion, in the book Religion, Food, and Eating in North America. If you have not done so yet, please go to storyofamericanreligion.org and navigate to the signup tab to register for future podcast notifications. Derek, in the section about religion, food and identity in Black life, you state that "Religious life of African-Americans includes a functional element of empowerment, allowing them to critically rethink the social reality and that food becomes one among other mediums through which this form of religious thought is expressed and promulgated." Can you paint us that picture a bit? I know you have touched on some of this already, but maybe give us a little bit more.


Derek: Sure. Um, that statement really draws from the theme of my first book Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition and in there, I am making the case that when I think about the Black Faith tradition within the context of the Black church or even other forms of religiosity that African-Americans involve themselves in, I think of it in terms of a theme of reclamation. Now, I am not talking about reclaiming something or you know, the taking back of something that was once yours, that was you were dispossessed of it and you took it back. I am utilizing another definition for reclamation which is the extraction from waste and refuse or trash something usable. And so, when I think about the ways in which the Black Faith tradition has manifested itself in its myriad of forms over hundreds of years within the um, African sojourn across the Atlantic into the Western World, notably within the context of what would become the United States, I think about traditions of people who lay claim to suffering and yet through their religious life extracted from the waste and refuse of that racism. The waste and refuse of that suffering, the waste and refuse of uh, the- of slavery in and of itself and found a way to articulate their own humanity through their faith tradition, uh, and it is a beautiful thing because I tell my students often that you may have had someone who converted to Christianity while enslaved in say 1808 and that person when they converted may have been in there later 30s. Now, chances are, he or she may not survive to see emancipation. They may not survive until uh, the final death nail of uh, enslavement at the end of the Civil War in 1865. They may not have seen uh, or ever heard tale of a 13th Amendment, let alone the 14th and 15th. And yet, when they converted, I have read narratives and letters of uh, formerly enslaved people who converted to this faith and as opposed to buying into the masters articulation of the faith, rearticulated that faith in a way that was more suitable for their experience, in a way that was more suitable for uh, their fullest expression of their own humanity. In other words, their past was changed by way of the faith that they themselves co-constructed. And so, for me that becomes the essence of this idea of reclamation and that becomes the stuff of the way Black folk in the face of the absurd could actually articulate their humanity even as they were yet suffering.


Chris: Okay, beautiful. Thank you. Can you briefly talk to us uh, about this [inaudible] in your quotes that Blacks feel, I think this is from WEB DuBois, um, and this is how it is described or defined. "An American and negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body." And how is this manifested in Black's foodways at the present time or through history?


Derek: Yeah.


Chris: Connect us to those two things.


Derek: Uh, Dubois ends that quote by saying "Whose dogged strength alone will not be torn asunder" and I think that uh, when we think about that two-ness within the context of the Black Faith tradition and the context of Black food culture. Um, they are two cultural productions that are always at odds with someone or some uh, or some-- either some community or some individual. Um, both of those cultural productions have been othered by those from outside of those communities. And so, in some way Black people have had to, you know, as Dubois describes it, this embody this two-ness at one sense, uh, the African in another sense the American who is trying to construct for his or her own self and identity that allows them to lay claim to their full humanity, while at the same time allows them to be accepted by the larger community that sees them as something more or less human. And so, that Two-ness is ever-present. Um, it is present in- in the debates where Black people are debating authenticity as I have already talked about. Uh, it is- it is, um, it is present in the debates about worship styles, whether the worship is to oral or uh, to- has too much robustness uh, versus uh, a worship style that uh, is more quiet and subdued, right? There are all of these ways in which the debate about legitimacy around Black life is tied to this kind of two-ness that one ever feels. And I think that while those debates have been challenging for many African Americans throughout the centuries, uh, what that also uncovers for us is an understanding that Black life is never understood in terms of it being in monolith. It is not this sole way of being that uh, in as much as you can have so many beautiful shades of Black flesh, uh, you can have so many beautiful ways of articulating Black cultural productions of religion and food. And so, that two-ness is ever there because you are trying to fight for identity and acceptance simultaneously, but you can't ever get away from the root of who you are.


Chris: Somewhere in the book and I thought I had a quest-- or in the chapter I thought I had a question about this, but I don't see it. Um, and we are coming to a close. You mention that these are always in conflict, right, with some other community or some other person, and I remember reading about some white criticism of Black food for its unhealthiness. Let us say fried chicken. Can you-- and I don't-- I have not constructed this question very well. I can't find it but it-- because when you said that I thought of this, can you talk to us about some of these conflicts? Perhaps it is the unhealthiness conflict or is that what you are talking about? Is that an example of what you are talking about, Derek?


Derek: Indeed. Right. So there is this, you know, I call this, uh, in one of my chapters I talked about how uh, Black culture can at once be detestable and a delicacy. And uh, on some level what you end up with is kind of Black cultural uh, productions at once being viewed as so odd and othering uh, and off-putting and distasteful that they become critiqued by white culture uh, for it either being backward or savage in terms of the religious expression and unhealthy and who would eat such a thing in terms of the culinary tradition. Uh, and then I think about an experience of going to a wine bar, which was pretty close to the campus of Rice University, uh, when I was a graduate student there. And um, what-- when you went to this wine bar, it also kind of small meals, tapas kind of style meals. And one of the most um, popular things that people order was a soul food dish and I can't remember if it was like ham hocks or- or- or oxtails. I think it was oxtails. And I was-- I marveled at the fact that I could be in this wine bar at any given night and a table fill-- full of white folks would be eating these oxtails and the way they presented them on the plate was like a delicacy and it was almost like their pastor to eating these oxtails was as though it was a delicacy and yet that same dish, um, that same food by someone throughout the centuries was also considered detestable, um, and you know, questioned Black folks in terms of why they would even eat it. And so, I think again you have this duality within the culture that Black folks have had to take on and deal with uh, on a daily basis and it is, you know, what is most interesting about this is it is an experience that is germane or at the very least unique to African-American life. No one else is questioning their American-ness other than you know, in the ways, in the same way that African Americans are, that Black people do. And it is not that we are questioning ourselves but we are ever trying to position ourselves uh, as full humans and position ourselves for safety and sometimes that requires this dealing with the reality that in one instance, we are considered savage and detestable and another instance, what we produce may very well be considered a delicacy.


Chris: Well, it is tough to think about. Let us move on here. You open the section entitled "Gumbo and African American cultural expression" by writing "Gumbo's complexity embodies what food waste studies reveals about the multi-layered expressions of Black cultural life." Can you paint this picture for us because we are now going to get into more of the gumbo parts, right?


Derek: Yeah. So like I said, so gumbo is made of these distinctive parts, like you got the base. So you have got the Holy Trinity, as they call it, of the vegetables, which is the celery, the onion and the bell pepper.


Chris: And they really call it that, the Holy Trinity?


Derek: The Holy Trinity of vegetables, yes. And then you have got your stock which some folks make fresh. I make my own stock. I usually take the carcass of the Thanksgiving turkey clean it out, clean off the meat on Thanksgiving Day. Bag it, freeze it until I am ready to use it and then I make a stock from that as the base of my gumbo. And so, I start that the day before I even start making the gumbo. And you have got the other ingredients that you are going to put in your gumbo. I do a chicken and andouille sausage gumbo. I like to get my sausage from Hebert's in Houston or out of place called Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. And sometimes I add shrimp but that is as far as I go and others will add crawfish. They will add crab. They might add oysters, uh, you know, so many things can go into it, but none of that is gumbo unless you have got the roux, R-O-U-X, the roux, which you have to painstakingly make, um, its oil, its butter, its flour and it is stirred over a period of anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes to get just right, and that becomes the kind of thickening agent of the gumbo that makes it distinctive from uh, from other, uh, big pot dishes like soups or stews. And so, that complexity is a lot of work and a lot of love goes into it and a lot of pride goes into it, uh, but that complexity is beautiful because of all of the diversity that is in that pot and you know, when I think about any idea of diversity and equity uh, beyond diversity, I think about gumbo often because again, we can pick out the distinct uh, elements of it. Like chicken tastes like chicken, sausage tastes like sausage, shrimp tastes like shrimp, and yet um, when they coalesce in this pot the whole thing tastes like one unit of flavor, which is gumbo. And so, I think there is just a beauty to that odd comparing and complexity.


Chris: Okay. Now this, uh, I think is very related to what you just said. You write that gumbo is "a brew of flavors, not a melting pot of blended flavors," which has captured what you just said, right?


Derek: Yes, yes, you know, I-- my students, if any of them listen to this, they are laughing right now because they know what I am about to say, that um, we hear a lot of people um, who uh, you know, good-natured folks who consider the best of the United States as being that of a melting pot. But when we think about the melting pot and uh, and I am dating myself but there was this Schoolhouse Rock episode. I don't know if you remember Schoolhouse Rock.


Chris: Absolutely.


Derek: Yeah. I would not know the preamble were it not for Schoolhouse Rock. Uh, but there was one element, uh, that talked about the beauty of this melting pot and what you saw were people, Black, White, Asian, Latin, all walking off this ramp into this pot. And one person stirring the pot and they all bleed, melt into one element. One color, one culture, and that gets touted as the beauty of the United States and I actually reject that idea, uh, because that idea gives way to ideas, uh, where people can be well-meaning when they say it but they will say stuff like I don't see color and, uh, you actually do and not only do you see it but many people recoil when they see certain colors of folks. And so, why not try to imagine ourselves as all one and rather imagine the beauty of this country as being um, inextricably tied to its complexity. And so, instead of the melting pot I like to think of the gumbo pot, which I just described as all of these flavors coalescing. When you pick out one individually that thing tastes like that thing, that chicken tastes like chicken and yet when you um, dip your spoon in the bowl, the whole thing tastes like one thing and the one thing tastes good to you because of all of the different things that you can also make out in it.


Chris: That is compelling. Why don't you reach out to Schoolhouse Rock and let us get a new video?


Derek: [laughs] That would be great.


Chris: Yeah. Yeah. No, that is, uh, that is compelling. Derek, in the final portion of your chapter, you begin by explaining that using gumbo as a metaphor encourages a "rethinking of religion in Black life" and that gumbo becomes figuratively a "conduit for a way of thinking about Black religion's ability to also bind a complex cultural community." Can you speak to that for a minute?


Derek: Yeah. In the same way I described that all those different elements of gumbo are bound together as one beautiful thing. That is a similar way that I think about the Black Faith tradition, that here you had, you know, I think about, uh, the efforts in South Carolina, uh, of Denmark Vesey who try to coordinate with um, others uh, a large-scale slave insurrection. And the ranks of his leaders included folks from the church, folks from the Gullah tradition, folks who were Arecia-based believing folks, uh, folks from-- and they also were trying to make connections to, uh, folks from Haiti who had experienced the overthrow of the French led by Toussaint L'ouverture. So, you had this complex coming together of people with the express attempt to free Black people, to allow them their fullest imagined capacity and humanity. And so, when I think about what is happening, uh, within this tradition, it has always been this complex form of religious expressions that come together in this wonderful yet sometimes odd way. Uh, here I quote uh, historian of religion Gayraud Wilmore who said, uh, Christianity amongst Black folks has always been more or less Christian and I think within that context we see the ways in which the more or less becomes uh, a way to articulate a vibrancy and a robustness that comes through, uh, the co-mingling of differences, uh, and the complexity of different individuals and subjects, uh, trying to create for themselves a life. Um, over my shoulder right here is a painting, uh, original painting that was commissioned by a wonderful artist named, uh, Omari Booker and it is of Fannie Lou Hamer. And Fannie Lou, uh, was connected to the church, connected to the freedom struggle and connected to food, and she was connected to all three intimately, uh, and without reservation. And uh, later in Fanny's uh, kind of one of the fade-- the post-civil rights phase or coming out of the Civil Rights phase into the next phase of her freedom fighting life, Fanny started a co-op, a food co-op, a massive food co-op in the Mississippi Delta and a pig bank. Uh, and she was able to do it through her innovation and mere dogged strength and brilliance, all of them coming together in order to create opportunities for Black people and poor people in general in the Mississippi Delta to thrive. And she was able to do it through a network of farmers, ministers, church groups uh, and politicians and other leaders. And I think that is kind of the nature of what I am trying to get at. That what Black folk have always been able to do is cultivate, uh, an innovative spirit that saw opportunity on the other side of their sufferings.


Chris: Thank you. You mentioned Fannie Lou Hamer, we are doing a podcast episode about her um, it will be published in a couple weeks. I will make sure you know about it. Second to last question and this you may not need to address since I think you did a little bit there, but maybe you want to speak to it a little bit more. You write at the end of the chapter um, this "Gumbo is not simply a dish but a unique experience. By the same token, some scholars argue that Black folks do not simply attend church. They engage in a complex expression of Faith all their own." This seems important that seems to have a lot of stuff packed in there. Is there anything you want to say, elaborate on a little bit here at the end about- about that?


Derek: Yeah. It is an experience in and of itself and it is a complex experience that it could be nuanced from worship house or house of worship to house of worship. Um, but that question makes me think of an experience that I had with a few friends recently. Uh, we were joking and I said, you know, "You know, you are in a Baptist Church." We were kind of like doing kind of one of those. You know, you are in a Baptist Church win and you know, some of them say something, someone else will say something and I said, I did not say anything. I just start singing, I said, [singing] "Well, I know the Lord. He heard my cry," and every person there knew what to say next and what to sing next and I am not going to go further into it. But someone listening to this right now is singing in their mind, uh, what they would hear in their own churches and oftentimes the deacons would start off service in that way. And so, it is a unique experience not so much because of uh, the conventions of it, but it is a unique experience that different people from different uh, church experiences could connect with but also unique in that there is nuance from house of worship to house of worship. And so, I think for me, in order to understand Black religion in its fullest extent we understand it, uh, by way of what my advisor Anthony called this quest for complex subjectivity. That we do not know what the subjectivity is. We do not know what it looks like in its most complex form, but that what Black religion ultimately is in terms of its nature is a quest for it. It is a quest for the full complexity of one subjectivity to be exercised in whatever form it takes and religion gives us a conduit to do that.


Chris: Okay, thank you. Well said. As we conclude, Derek, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book either in terms of the chapter or your forthcoming book, either in terms of important historical transformations you were charting or in terms of simply helping us better understand our present moment?


Derek: Yeah. I am glad you ended with the present moment. The last chapter of the book that I am writing now really tries to take, uh, take seriously the ways in which history has created space for a better understanding of the present moment. And so I ended this way. I called my grandmother-- or in that chapter, which is chapter that I called “the hunger game.” I do not know if I will be able to still use the name. I did not say Hunger Games but “a hunger game”, uh, where um, I am somewhat critiquing well-meaning social justice or food justice workers who will go into communities and say "Hey, this Black community needs-- just needs more community gardens and Black folks need to eat more kale. And you know, it reminds me of conversations that I have had with someone I mentioned earlier, Psyche Williams-Forson, who is doing this work around folk not “yucking my yum”, right? Do not “yuck” what has been for me a- a- or for a community a traditional need as it relates to their culinary cultures. And so, it reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandmother a few years back where I called her and I said "You know what? I just made some kale and it is good and it is a shame that white folk been keeping kale from Black folk all these years." Now I said that fully tongue, firmly planted in cheek and I expected my grandmother to laugh but she did not. In fact, she got quiet. And I said "Mom, Barbra Jean, which is what we call her. I said, "I was joking. Why didn't you laugh?" She said, "I am disappointed." I said, "Well, why are you disappointed?" She said, "Well, you have been eating kale all your life." I said, "No, I have not." She said, "Yes, I used to grow kale in the backyard." I said "No, you did not. You see, you are now in your 80s and now you are getting it all wrong. In the backyard you grew mustards and you grew collards and the woman on the other side of the fence grew turnips and you all would swap and that is what your backyard included." And she said, "See, now you are showing what you do not know." She said because between my collards and my mustard greens, I grew a little patch of kale, because for us back then kale was not this, you know, people were not making a big deal out of kale. Kale for me was a supplemental green as what I would use to augment taste or something I would use to make fuller whatever greens I was making. So she said, "Sorry to tell you but you need to know your history better because you have been eating kale all your life." And that got me to thinking "If I did not know my own history, what else don't others know?" And so, what I am hoping to do with this book is shed at least a little bit of light that foregrounds these traditions that are culinary and religious, all at the same time, that are carried from the antebellum period all the way through contemporary times, that do a very serious work in and through the Black community or Black communities at large but ultimately, always come back to traditional forms and complex expressions of one's humanity.


Chris: Thank you, Derek, for that last word. We have been talking to blah blah blah. Okay. We have been talking with Derek Hicks, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University's Divinity School, author of the chapter A unique Feast-- no, sorry-- unusual Feast. I will start out again. An Unusual Feast. We have been talking with Derek Hicks, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University's Divinity School, author of the chapter, “An Unusual Feast: Gumbo and the complex brew of Black religion” in the book Religion, Food and Eating in North America.
 
Here at the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners understand more about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States, seeing to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment and self-government.
 
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Derek, thank you so very much for being with us and for doing the really hard work of writing a book that helps us all understand America better. It has been super enlightening and I hope you have enjoyed the time with us as well.

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Derek: Chris, it has been wonderful. It has been an honor to be here. Thank you so much.