Poundcakes and Cornbread
By: Victoria Spear
Sugar milk and flour are key components to any line of literature, from the pre-baked oven steeped in culture to the many vanilla extracts of trauma and tears. Food forms a connection between culture and emotions in day-to-day life; whether it’s soup, rice, or simply a secret recipe of cake. The poetry in “Magic City Gospel” by Ashley Jones and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Saltine” by Nickole Brown displays emotions and memory through food expanding on social class as well as culture as a whole. Food is important in many cultures and is expressed in many ways through shows, books, and even poetry with how it leaves an impact. Jones and Brown both emphasize this in both a positive and negative manner with social class and race. They emphasize this by; exploring social class through taste, using culture and how food leaves an impact, and using the sense of smell to allude to memory.
Using culture and how food leaves an impact
While reading through `Magic City Gospel’ by Ashley Jones, she makes a lot of references to food when recalling a specific memory. Food as well as taste is a key component in memory and is used frequently through poetry and literature. Using one of the four senses it leaves a bigger impact for the audience and readers overall. Culture also plays a deep part in food and memory from a young age to when one grows up. Thus many can relate when reading through these poems, for they have had these experiences and even feel a sense of comfort knowing they are not alone.
In ‘Sonnet for Sopping’ Jones draws attention to how her mother eats her food with her hands, she describes the texture and smell of colonization and culture being interrupted to fit into social dynamics. This transpires on page 12: “What special flavors hide inside thumb, index, middle, ring, what slides through that is lost on the cold teeth of a fork?”(5-7). The detail she goes into emphasizes the fingers and how they hold the foods and flavors of eating with their hands rather than with utensils. The following lines add to this tension: “When did we embrace the colonial cuffs of silverware so that even our food assimilates?” (12-14). Here she is drawing attention to how their culture is being interrupted by needing to fit in with society’s standards and abandoning their simple way of eating. This conditioning is seen very often and carries on to the next generation as seen here with Jones as she was watching her mother eat with her hands differently from how she was raised on utensils.
This displays how culturally significant it is for people of color to have to appropriate themselves to keep appearances. The fact that it was colonized for coloreds to use utensils rather than to use their hands to eat, unfortunately, is only one example of what happens in day-to-day life with socialization. Using food from her culture as well as providing a specific memory to her message leaves an impact for the reader. With Jones drawing attention to her culture, using this experience is inspiring, to slowly draw oneself from society’s expectations that affect everyone; including the way they eat and present themselves.
Exploring Social Class Through Taste
Taste is explored through many forms of literature, due to it being one of the five senses humans possess. The sense of being able to taste certain things in a meal or even fluid is enough to recall a memory, even one of social standing. In “Thirteen Ways of Looking at A Salatine’ by Nicole Brown provides examples as well as memories of how the taste of a saltine left a huge impact on her memory about her social standing. Much like black culture Jones explores through food, Brown draws attention to the taste of a cracker that held her title in social class.
Brown explored the topic of recalling social class through taste in her work. Much like Jones, Brown recalls her experience with saltines and remembers how it relates to her family. She does this in section eight lines (7:5-9): “Like the family I love best, the bite is rough at first but quickly goes soft nearly falls apart without even the need to chew,” (7:5-9). This allusion to taste talking about how ‘rough’ her family is and how they ‘fall apart without the need to chew’ really goes into how her family dynamic operates. The fact that the taste of the saltine instilled memories in her about her family dynamic spoke volumes. She follows up in a section about how her first experience of being called a ‘cracker’ to being innocent at first; she didn’t realize it was meant as an insult. “The first time I was called a cracker no one could have told me it was anything but a jive at what we ate,” (9:2-3). The ‘jive’ she’s speaking about is the lack of food they were able to eat because they were poor and saltines were very cheap and affordable to purchase for food. This gives the audience an insight as to how bitter she truly sees the food and how it resolves back around to her life each time she tastes the saltine.
Although many can relate to social class and descrimination due to background, the way Brown explores this through the taste of a simple saltine is brilliant. Taste does have a strong impact in literature and day to day life especially when thinking culturally or one’s social class. Whether ist cornbread cake or a simple saltine, the crumbs that role of our taste buds can leave an impact on how we look at oneself as well as the world as a whole.
Using sense of smell to allude to memory
Whether or not it’s a personal experience among people, the sense of smell is used to decipher whether something is good or bad; the smell can be so familiar enough to even recall a specific memory in poetry. Smell is essential in many forms of literature to explain one’s surrounding familiarity of understanding. It’s very popular within fiction and poetry as well; many of the works using smell mostly refer back to memory of a certain subject or past event. With this writers and creators can have more effect within their work and even lead their readers with a sense of relativity and connection.
Works that stood out the most with smells would have to be Jones in “Gospel of Grits”. In this work what stood out the most is how the writer emphasizes how people in the south wake up to breakfast with smell. “Wake up, bacon. Wipe eyes, biscuit dough. Sting of coffee silenced by sugar, kiss of milk.” (page 49 lines 4-5). These lines allude to how the narrator can recall memories in the morning through smell when waking up each morning for breakfast. Jones even highlights each step of waking up before smelling the familiar scent of said breakfast food, this adds more detail and allusion to the poem and work overall making it memorable. She even follows up in the following lines, “When I think of you, I think of heat.”(page: 49 line:7). Jones is indirectly saying that through food and smells she’s recalling fond memories of waking up each morning to a fulfilling meal. This seals the case with how impactful the sense of smell is even with creators when trying to express meaningful moments through their work.
Many would-be often surprised with how much personal experience can be placed on the sense of smell alone. Whether or not it draws back in memory of good or bad is up to experience, but we as humans use this sense to decipher just that. The way smell is explored through others’ works may be small but it is relatable to others especially the audience in many ways. Jones was successful with capturing this, and giving her readers one of her best works that most can relate to.
Food, smell, and taste leave a heavy impact on literature as we know it and inspire authors to formulate writings that peers and strangers can relate to whether it’s socially or culture-wise. Ashley Jones and Nichole Brown highlighted this beautifully in their works, from their experiences with race to the struggles of being poor. Their works exploring their memories through their work left a huge impact on others, leaving behind a feeling of relativity and understanding. Maybe just maybe, the baker steeped and cooked up in literature makes a wonderful pound cake.
