Reviews for Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power

The average rating for Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-18 00:00:00 John Douglass What seems like such a narrow subject at first (black women and chicken) reveals a depth I could not have imagined possible. I particularly liked the first half of the book where the author explores the history of the stereotypes surrounding what black people eat. The images chosen are particularly powerful! In the second half, she analyzes contemporary works of art and their meaning, but it felt too scholarly and subjective to me. I feel it's still a great point of entry for anyone interested in the subject of food and race.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-23 00:00:00 Khalid Shamsher Considered for the food class, this is an anthropological-historical study of the foodways of African-Americans Americans, from the economic reality that women and children could raise chickens for a little extra money on very little resources, selling fried chicken to train passengers for extra income (or making box lunches because of non-existent or segregated eating facilities), the oral histories of the rise and fall of the Coon chicken franchise, white women competing to have the best cooks and pirating their recipes for "Southern" cookbooks, the prestige of being chosen to host the preacher for Sunday dinner, Chris Rock and the "taking the big piece of chicken" routine and the trope in the subversive silhouette artwork of Karen Walker.