Can I read Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs : Black Women, Food, and Power on EtoBox?

Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs : Black Women, Food, and Power by Psyche A. Williams-Forson is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs : Black Women, Food, and Power about?

Chicken--both the bird and the food--has played multiple roles in the lives of African American women from the slavery era to the present. It has provided food and a source of income for their families, shaped a distinctive culture, and helped women define and exert themselves in racist and hostile environments. Psyche A. Williams-Forson examines the complexity of black women's legacies using food as a form of cultural work. While acknowledging the negative interpretations of black culture associated with chicken imagery, Williams-Forson focuses her analysis on the ways black women have forged their own self-definitions and relationships to the "gospel bird." Exploring material ranging from personal interviews to the comedy of Chris Rock, from commercial advertisements to the art of Kara Walker, and from cookbooks to literature, Williams-Forson considers how black women arrive at degrees of self-definition and self-reliance using certain foods. She demonstrates how they defy conventional representations of blackness and exercise influence through food preparation and distribution. Understanding these complex relationships clarifies how present associations of blacks and chicken are

Who reads Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs : Black Women, Food, and Power?

Author

Psyche A. Williams-Forson

Publisher

The University of North Carolina Press; University of North Carolina Press

Published

2006

Language

EN

ISBN

9780807830222

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Cooking, Science, Anthropology

Rating

3.86 / 5 (52 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14