Throughout the novel Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo Ntozake Shange illustrates the lives of three sisters who work to achieve their dream lives as African-American women in Charleston, South Carolina. While the mother encourages her daughters to pursue education, hopeful that it is a path to marriage and happiness, each of them ends up following different paths to assure their future. Indigo works to achieve an idea of her identity through her intriguing world of magic, immersed with hand crafting dolls. Her interest in spirituality is also highlighted throughout her journey. The West Coast draws in Sassafras, where she flourishes in the unique craft of fiber arts. Finally, dance is the form of art in which Cypress chooses. She pursues this talent in San Francisco, and flourishes just like her two sisters. The novel is unique in that Ntozake writes it in the form of letters, diary entries, and magic spells from each sisters’ individual point of view. The most compelling piece of this novel, however, is the way in which recipes have the power to keep a culture alive no matter the time or place a person may be.
Recipes and the art of cooking is interesting within itself, but also has the power to give the reader additional stories on the ancestry of one’s culture. The way in which people have always cooked together, eaten together, and shared food together has always meant more than just to fuel our bodies. They are more so practices and routines that speak on their own unique stories of culture. A simple recipe can tell who is the chef, what foods are available in a certain place, as well as what these components mean to a certain culture. As the three sisters and Hilda grow apart physically, food and recipes act as a fishing net for Hilda to reel in her daughters even when distance separates them from their home of Gullah land.
The way in which recipes pull in all the sisters, and keep them close to their culture, is illustrated mostly through Sassafras. Closer to the end of the novel, Hilda becomes nervous for Sassafras when Sassafras declares that she is going to begin celebrating Kwanzaa instead of Christmas. Sassafras was living in California at the time, placing immense physical distance between the mother-daughter duo. However, Hilda finds a way to intertwine her culture with Sassafrasses new decisions. She condemns her own worries by sharing her recipe for “Duck with Mixed Oyster Stuffing” with Sassafras and reminds her that even though Charleston is seemingly less radical than California, “…things change, even your mama…” (133). Shange makes it extremely clear in this section that despite differences in lifestyle, one’s culture can always survive. The way in which Hilda and her daughters’ culture continues to thrive through recipes amidst drastic changes in family and society proves the importance of maintaining the art of food which one was raised in. She emphasizes the importance of holding onto cultural roots in order to keep the culture alive and have rituals to pass onto the next generation. The art of cooking proves that with enough magic amidst our recipes, whatever a culture passes onto the next generation will hopefully be filled with the love and care which evidently, draws us closer to our family no matter the physical distance.
I agree with your thesis that recipes have the power to keep a culture alive. I see food as a unifying force: something that brings the whole family together around the kitchen table to enjoy the fruits of their culture. As you write, it also has the power to stretch across thousands of miles, from South Carolina to LA, carrying the love and magic of the Geechee/Gullah culture.
What I found most interesting about how Shange uses traditional recipes is how she appeals to the senses when writing a recipe. When you read them, you imagine the flavors and smells created in the sensory experience of cooking and eating. When I read “Hilda’s Turkey Hash” that she prepared on Christmas morning, I was brought back to memories of my own home on Christmas morning. Throughout Shange’s novel, the various recipes are the most prominent depiction of Black joy.
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I think that the connection that you point to here between recipes and culture is an important one. Cooking/food has always been recognized as an important signifier of culture. However, your comment that reads, “A simple recipe can tell who is the chef, what foods are available in a certain place, as well as what these components mean to a certain culture,” points to a development of this connection that I had not really ever thought of. You point to how recipes reveal so much about not just the general culture of one’s ethnicity, but of the chef’s personal relationship with their culture, of the specific location in which these recipes were developed, and the personal significance of ingredients used. This more personalized take on the relationship between recipes and culture is an interesting point that you highlight, and it has led me to want to develop on this even further. You briefly mention that recipes are a means of getting a glimpse of the “ancestry of one’s culture.” This implies the ability to see back far into one’s familial line through the lens of cooking and recipes. Due to slavery and other related means of oppression, people of color have an interesting relationship with ancestry. Due to the events surrounding the slave trade, many people of color are not able to trace their bloodlines back as far as white people. This is why websites like “23 and Me” and “Ancestry.com” are often brought into conversations of white privilege. Because of slavery, the connection that people of color have to their ancestry can be inherently compromised – the historical records that these types of websites rely on to trace lineages are not available for many people who have ancestors that were enslaved. This is a very tangible way in which slavery still has an intense impact on people of color today. Since recipes tend to be passed down through generations, cooking and recipes can help to close some of these gaps that are left in the family histories of many people of color. I think that cooking has always been a really important signifier of Black culture specifically, and I would like to point out this concept that I have described as a possible reason for that. Additionally, because Black people were stripped of access to education through slavery, people of color do not have as much access to things like letters and correspondences that help to paint the picture of one’s family tree. Therefore, the reliance on recipes becomes even more pronounced as a means of allowing people of color to maintain a connection to not only Black culture, but their culture – their personal culture and their family’s personal history. Therefore, recipes not only act as a connection for Black people to their culture, and their family’s specific culture, but they can also act as the very bridge by which people of color are able to access their ancestry. Recipes, specifically those that are passed down through generations, act as this important way in which people of color can perhaps access parts of their personal history that slavery deprives them of. Recipes are so personal and it is the little details – the handwriting, the choices of ingredients, the way quantities are described, the notes in the margins – that make them such significant connectors to one’s family history. I think this overall concept is perfectly illustrated by the example you point to, as Hilda relies on recipes to keep her daughters feeling close to her as they all begin their own distinct lives.