Food as Hieroglyphics: Amiri Baraka and Black Expressive Culture

Writing in 1934, Hurston’s anthropological skill and cultural familiarity allow her to capture soundly an essence of the beauty and art of African American cultural expression. She notes, “Black people speak in hieroglyphics”; in visuals and in movements, tastes, and sounds. Often, these performances do not “meet conventional standards” but they “[satisfy] the soul of the creator” (Hurston 80). These forms of cultural expressions or hieroglyphics are the ways in which African Americans perform group identity using dance, clothing, music, language, art, and food.1 These are some of the ways African American people do Blackness. J. Allen Kawan notes “groups utilize expressive culture to reassert control over their bodies, critique white culture, challenge stereotypical representations in mass culture, and develop collective identities that transcend geography and time. Groups censor these cultural performances for mainstream audiences who often appropriate them without knowledge of their hidden meanings.”