Hog And Hominy Analysis

At first glance Hog and Hominy and From Creole to African might seem to be completely unrelated. Hog and Hominy focuses on the development of Soul Food and how it was a side effect of creolization. From Creole to African focuses on the changing identities of the Atlantic Creoles. Both in their own way are about creolization.

One of the main arguments made in Hog and Hominy is that Soul Food wasn’t created without outside influence. Opie points out that many of the food types associated with soul were introduced to the Africans by European traders and white plantation owners. He argues “that African cookery was significantly transformed by [European influences], in large part stemming from the commerce that began as a result of, first, the

Creoles are a result of the interactions between Africans and Europeans. “[They] first appeared at the trading feitorias or factories” established by the Europeans in Africa. Over time they were able to act as middlemen between Europeans and Africans and even established their own language called “Guinea speech”. Unfortunately, they lost their status as middlemen when they were enslaved. Though the experience of the enslaved varied they all had less control over their lives and many of their skills had become useless and over time they were “de-skilled by the process of enslavement.” This makes sense from the perspective of the plantation owners since the enslaved were mainly used for manual labor and their former experience as middlemen was not a skill their new masters wanted to encourage. There was a continued effort by the plantation owners to strip away their identity by renaming the enslaved which was most likely done to break their will and make them submit to their new masters. While there was resistance to this process the identity of the creoles had changed greatly over the years.

Hog and Hominy and From Creole to African are about creolization. As mentioned in the previous paragraphs Hog and Hominy focuses on Soul Food, and From Creole to African focuses on the changing identities of the Creoles. They both start in Africa and explain how they changed after they were introduced to the Americas. In addition, it is likely that neither Soul Food nor Creoles would have existed if creolization had not occurred. The main difference between how they are organized is that Hog and Hominy stops during the 1980’s, while From Creole to African ends during the Colonial