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Quote by Marcie Cohen Ferris

“The study of foodways - the intersection of food and culture - addresses a central issue in the humanities: how we connect the great dramas of history with the lives of ordinary people.”

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Marcie Cohen Ferris

Limited information is available about Marcie Cohen Ferris, whose occupation and category are unknown. more

“In studying food, you embrace everything. Food exposes the long, complex history of the South - slavery, Jim Crow segregation, class struggle, extreme hunger, sexism, and disenfranchisement. These issues are revealed through food encounters, and they contrast this with the pleasure and the inventiveness of Southern cuisine. Food is always at the heart of daily life in the South.”

Heart Long Pleasure Struggle Study Slavery Embrace Hunger Daily Life Sexism Southern Contrast Segregation Crow Jim Crow Inventiveness

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“Historically, women's voices were central to food narratives, yet they were marginalized, and what happened at the table, the kitchen, the garden, and the fields was silenced. I'm very interested in how food appears in the historical record and animates our understanding of the South. It provides texture both to the past and to our contemporary experience. My work is not about discovering new voices, but rather it encourages voices that have been silenced to come forward and speak a little louder.”

Past Speak Understanding Garden Historical Kitchen

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“The core cuisine of Southern food is established in the plantation South, within the world of slavery. To understand the plantation table, we must understand the relationship of enslaved people to Africa, to historical trauma, and their central role in food production. Their voice is the most poignant, expressive voice in Southern cuisine.”

People World Slavery Historical Trauma Southern Poignant

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“The South is about the abundance, beauty, and richness of Southern culture, but also its dark underside. The history of Southern food reflects the history of slavery, of poverty, of the negotiation of power.”

Culture Dark Poverty Slavery Abundance Southern Negotiation

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“Every day, nay every moment, try to do some good deed.”

Trying Moments Deeds Good Deeds Good Day Caliphs

Author:Abu Bakr

“I think about what I eat every day. I try to eat as locally as I can and as healthily as I can. When you prepare a historic recipe that could as easily been eaten in the 1800s as in 2014, it is a powerful act. When you take that food and its associated memory and put it in your body, it becomes part of who you are. While most people do not think about it consciously, there is an honoring of history that happens during that meal.”

People Thinking Trying Memories Powerful Who You Are Historic

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“Terroir - the taste of place - was important from the early South of the first Indian, African, and Europeans to the nineteenth-century South. During that time, Southerners ate far more locally and seasonally, from the ground they knew and grew up on. That idea connects back to today. You are a place. And as a Southerner, the food you place in your body speaks of your personal history, and of the broader Southern history.”

Important Today Speak Southern Southerner

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“Food is an important lens onto the civil rights movement. One of the central issues of the movement was the right to eat in places that served the public. This battle led to the lunch counter sit-ins, which became embattled, contested places.”

Important Battle Civil Rights Civil Rights Movement

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“The working poor in the South are often blamed for their reliance on "traditional" Southern food, while in reality, most are eating the same heavily processed, cheap, convenience foods that the majority of working people eat across the United States.”

People Reality Poor Eating Southern Reliance

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

“If there was ever a food that had politics behind it, it is soul food. Soul food became a symbol of the black power movement in the late 1960s. Chef Marcus Samuelsson, with his soul food restaurant Red Rooster in Harlem, is very clear about what soul food represents. It is a food of memory, a food of labor.”

Soul Black Memories Labor Chef 1960s

Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris

Quote by Marcie Cohen Ferris

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