"Sylvia's Soul Food" By Slyvia Woods and Christopher Styler, A Wonderful Soul Food Cookbook

In one of my frequent trips to what I call "junk stores", I found a wonderful little soul food cookbook called "Sylvia's Soul Food: Recipes From Harlem's World Famous Restaurant" by Sylvia Woods and Christoper Styler. Sylvia Woods either is or was the owner of a soul food restaurant in Harlem which has now morphed into a soul food empire according to their website. I have found what appear to be puffed descriptions of Mr. Styler which describe him as being a chef, writer, etc. but I suspect he wasn't much more than a ghost writer in this effort. The edition of the book which I found was a hardback printed by the William Morrow Company in 1992. The copies I find on the interet are very different from the plain red cover I found in a Goodwill store for $1.59. They all appear to be paperback with a gaudy photo montage on the cover. When I found the book, I scanned it and realized it has some very interesting recipes which are rarely found in cookbooks published anywhere. I have eaten and loved other people's versions of some of the recipes, never had a few others, and would love to try nearly all of them. This book is a little joy to behold and can be found fairly cheaply on most used book websites. However, if you order it from the used websites, be sure to know in advance if you are getting the hardback or the paperback versions. There is also a second cookbook from the restaurant which I have never seen. I'm surprised I never ran into it anywhere before, at least on the internet. The pork section of the book is a joy to behold especially if you grew up in the south or Appalachia. It contains a recipe for Backbone In Gravy and I have to admit I have never seen a backbone recipe in any cookbook anywhere, not even in one from some little southern church. I grew up on backbones and love them still today. But I have to admit that I almost totally eliminated pork from my diet about seven years ago when I realized that I had a totally blocked carotid artery and was facing a potentially life threatening surgery. As part of an effort to live as long as possible, I changed my diet drastically and took up daily exercise. But I can still exercise fond memories of grease and colagen up to my elbows and back to my ears on occasions. The cookbook also contains a recipe for Pigs' Tails. I have eaten a lot of pig tails in my time and love nothing in the world better than a large restaurant sized pot full of pig ears, tails, and feet cooked along with potatoes,carrots, and an onion or two. I also love that same large pot filled with organ meats at hog killing time. But I stopped that when it came to a choice of such foods or a coffin. But I did dearly love pork livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs or "lights", and spleens or "melts" as we called them when I was a boy. It is fun to find a cookbook and a big city restaurant which is proud of its pig tails, chitlins, and backbones. In this cookbook, there is even a recipe for Fried Chitlins. I have never seen a printed recipe for chitlins in my life. I also have to admit that I have never tried chitlins even though I spent years believing that "no hog should ever have to die in vain" and that we should "eat everything except the squeal". That recipe calls for the chitlins to be "thoroughly cooked to make them tender before they are quickly fried". I will say that in the right cook's hands I would try chitlins. But I have never been in a home where they were being cooked. A variant of the Fried Chitlin recipe is Chitlins and Maw which calls for 2 pounds of pork maw and 5 pounds of precooked chitlins.This is a boiled recipe and I can assure you that with 7 pounds of the two meats in the pot along with several vegetables it won't matter if an extra mouth or two shows up at the supper table. For those of you who don't know the term "maw" it is pork stomach or tripe. I have had tripe on a few occasions in a Vietnamese restaurant I love to visit and I like tripe a lot. In restaurants and butcher shops, tripe may have come from either cattle or hogs. The great recipes just go on and on in this book. The Beef section has Oxtails In Gravy and Grilled Beef Liver. All through my life I have eaten liver from beef, pork, and chicken; and, about two weeks ago I had chicken gizzards which can still be found on the menu of a local Lee's Famous Recipe. I have considered several times to buy an ox tail and cook it at home but never carried through with the idea In the Poultry section, there are recipes for Chicken And Dumplings, Turkey Wings And Gravy, and Roast Turkey. The book has a separate section devoted to Barbecue which has a great looking recipe for Barbecued Pigs Feet. I have eaten pig feet my whole life but never had the barbecued. This one is worth trying! The truncated Fish And Game section of the book is a disappointment after the great preceding sections on Beef and Pork. It only has six recipes but one of them is for Rabbit Flavored And Fried ang another for Hash Venison. But I must ask where are the recipes for alligator, muskrat, ground hog, elk, squirrels, bear, raccoon, and other wild game which many southern cooks are still cooking and eating regularly. The section labled Beans, Potatoes, Rice, And Salads has a recipe for Red Beans And Rice which uses a smoked ham hock instead of the andouille sausage which nearly all other such recipes for this dish use. It might be interesting done with the ham hock. It also contains another chitlin recipe called Rice And Chitlins Perlew which is worth investigating. This section also has recipes for pinto beans, butter beans, and lima beans. Nearly all of them use smoked ham hocks for flavoring. There is a separate section labled Vegetables And Greens which has the obligatory recipes for okra and collard greens. But it also has an interesting recipe for Collard Greens And Corn Meal Dumplings. I have never seen corn meal dumplings in my life and I'd love to try this recipe, or to try corn meal dumplings in the customary way that regular flour dumplings are usually made...like the BIG FLUFFY DUMPLINGS which my mother used to make. Yes, I know that it would be very hard to get fluffy corn meal dumplings since the nature of corn meal doesn't lend itself to fluff. The idea of corn meal dumplings is very intersting to me since one of my favorite occasional breakfasts is corn meal hoe cakes. A favorite supper for me is also fried cornbread and gravy which is made by slicing left over cornbread, frying it in bacon grease, removing the cornbread temporarily from the skillet before making the gravy, and then bathing the cornbread in the gravy. All in all, this book was one of best deals I have ever made for $1.59. If you like soul food, southern food, pork and beef innards and other southern, African American, or Appalachian foods, this is a great book to own.

Reading And Defending "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"

I have written more than once on this blog about reading banned books, both those previously banned and those currently banned or being threatened with banning.  Many of the greatest books in the world have been or are still banned in many countries and smaller jurisdictions ranging from nations down to tiny school districts.  Both of Mark Twain's incredibly well written and well loved novels about growing up as a boy on the Mississippi River have been banned at times and many school districts in America today still refuse to allow them to be taught in their public schools.  There is no more important organ of democracy in the world than a free and unfettered press which is why the Founding Fathers in their infinite wisdom guaranteed it in the US Constitution.  The very reasons they guaranteed it are the same reasons that are being used today to attack that constitutionally guaranteed free press.  Despots, tyrants, zealots, and idiots are likely to attempt to ban books for as long as they are printed and to move on, as they are today, to also attacking and banning all other forms of mass communication.  Nothing scares tyrants, despots, zealots, and idiots more than the truth and the free expression of it.  I have stated at times in writings on this blog that it is likely that one of these two books in discussion in this blog post was probably the first book I ever read which had been banned.  So with the need to preserve a free press in mind, I have recently reread both of these masterpieces from Mark Twain.  

I fully realize that there are many reasons these two books were banned and that many of those reasons are legitimate on their face.  Much of the content in the books which refers to African Americans can be considered to be racist.  But when we read any book, we should examine the date of the original copyright and attempt to determine if the book in question was an accurate portrayal of the people, places, and times which they are depicting at the time of their original publication.  There can be absolutely no doubt that Mark Twain understood the Mississippi River, Missouri, and the people who resided there in the late 1800's as well or better than any other human alive at that point.  He also understood the institution of slavery and he did not endorse it as any intelligent reader of the two books can tell you.  These books were much more stories about friendships between unique and very different individuals who were living at the margins of Missouri society in the later years of the 19th century.  Two white boys, one the heavily abused son of the town drunk, and the other raised by an aunt after being orphaned befriend and have that friendship returned by an African American slave.  Throughout the books, at no time do these three persons ever treat each other as less than equal.  They never fail to reciprocate with the same loyalty and trust which is offered to them.  They take turn about standing up for, fighting in support of, and rescuing each other from one peril after another ranging from murderers, con men, and fugitive slave hunters, to a highly dangerous and deadly Big Muddy.  Along the 800 or so pages contained in the two books, each of the three faces opportunities to take the easy road out without being forced to suffer and they all always stand up, grit their teeth, and take the road less traveled in support of their friends.  At various times in the manuscripts, each of them is hailed as a hero when the easier route would have been for them to accept their own personal villiany and walk quietly away without losing any skin off their nose.  They never do that.  They stick by each other from start to finish and never flinch.  

Mark Twain--Photo by Ebay

Yes, I know that the language in the books, especially that in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is racist.  But it was the common language of the day among all the groups whose dialects Twain was writing.  Mark Twain wrote in the original foreword to "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that he would be writing the book using three dialects of three different groups of people in the area of his fictional town on the river.  Here is what he said: "the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary Pike County dialect; and four modified varieties of this last."  And that is exactly what he did.  I am not always a fan of writing in dialect and that aversion is deeply rooted in the fact that I grew up speaking and still speak my own version of one of the most maligned and vilified dialects in the country, the Southern Appalachian dialect.  When Mark Twain wrote in those various dialects of Missouri, he was required to use their verbiage, vocabulary, accents, and idiosyncrasies.  And he did a damn fine job of it.  He has ever since been pilloried by his detractors for having used the singular, and sometimes singularly repulsive, vocabulary of Missouri slave holders and poor whites.  And if we, in our self-appointed "wisdom" (translate ignorance) attempt to edit those words out of the books, we are doing a great disservice to the average reader who had no idea how poor slaves were spoken of and treated at the time of the books.  

I have little doubt that some of my readers here will accuse me of racism for having taken this position in defense of two of the greatest American novels ever written.  So let me tell you a little about my life history.  I have spent twenty years living and working in settings, both in agriculture and the human services, in which the employees and clientele were roughly 80% African American.  I have performed home visits in the ghettos of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Erie, Southern New Jersey, and Lexington, Kentucky.  I know whereof I speak when I speak of the downtrodden since 8 of those years were spent working with a homeless population who were primarily African American.  But if you choose be well rounded in the area of American Literature or to produce children who are well rounded, you need to read and you need to assure that those children read the work of Mark Twain, and if possible, to read all of his works.  Do not in your self-appointed righteousness refuse to read two of the best American novels ever written. 

Thoughts About Writing Dialect

I am somewhat omnivorous in my reading within a few reasonable bounds.  I will read almost anything with the exception that I generally never read what I call "drugstore fiction".  By that, I mean that I will generally never read anything that can be found on the paperback racks at your local small store, dollar store, or other such general market businesses.  The one exception I make to that rule is that I do sometimes read the work of Dean Koontz who, at his best, is a better than average writer with intelligent, original, well constructed, plots which will hold the attention of most discriminating readers.  At his worst, Koontz is a typical drugstore fiction author.  Like most other authors who consistently crank out one or more books a year, he does not always produce his best work and sometimes, he, his agent, and publisher inflict some fairly low grade work on the ever receptive fan base he has developed over the years.  

I like to read with some variety although my first love will always be Appalachian literature, both fiction and non-fiction.  I am a native born, native educated, and proud Appalachian and I never apologize for it.  Several of the best writers America has ever produced came from Appalachia: Pearl S. Buck, Thomas Wolfe, Albert Stewart, Loyal Jones, P. J. Laska, Bob Snyder, and several others both living and dead. I do frequently find myself reading other literature from other areas, some in the social sciences where my degrees are rooted; history both Appalachian and World; poetry from the recognized masters; anthropology; and the natural sciences.  I often deliberately use a book from one of these areas to break up long term periods of nothing but Appalachian Literature. 

This post has been primarily caused by a little book I reread today from the fields of African American and children's literature, "Flossie & the Fox" by Patricia C. McKissack and illustrated by Rachel Isadora.  I had bought and read the book originally when I was employed as a mental health therapist in a juvenile treatment facility at a time when state licensing agencies were particularly focused on the consistent provision of culturally diverse group therapy and culturally diverse encounter experiences.  I dug it out of a pile of books today because my wife and I have had our seven year old nephew in our home for about two weeks and I am particularly focused on diminishing the amount of time he spends with what I consider to be his obsession with "Mine Craft" an internet based game whose value I seriously doubt.  "Flossie & the Fox" was published in 1986 and some readers and parents might consider it a bit dated.  The book is described by the author as "...a story from my youth, retold in the same rich and colorful dialect of the rural South."  It is an African American story about a young girl on a plantation who is sent to deliver some eggs to a neighbor of her mother's.  She is warned before she leaves home about a fox which has been stealing a lot of eggs and which cannot be caught by the local hounds.  In the story, she meets the fox and enters into a lengthy conversation, argument, or discussion with him in which she denies believing that he is actually a fox.  Told in rich African American dialect from the rural, agricultural south, the story moves quickly with humor, insight, and grace.  The little girl and one of the local hounds ensure that the eggs make it to their intended destination.  In spite of its age and particular cultural focus, it is a book which is worthy of any young reader's attention.  For those of us who are interested in southern or African American dialect, it is also interesting to the adult reader. It is a story about a young child learning self sufficiency, confidence, and inner strength.  I am glad my nephew's presence caused me to dig that little work out and reread it.  I freely recommend it to both you and your children or grandchildren.

It also reminded me of a fairly new friend of mine, an African American woman who grew up in poverty and lived to retire from the federal government.  She also happens to write some highly readable memoir material.  The dialect material in "Flossie & the Fox" might not be totally accurate in today's south.  But it is a rich window into the language spoken on plantations, farms, and small town streets in a dozen states running from Maryland to Florida and from Georgia to East Texas.  I rarely write in dialect and do not always see the value in using it.  Any culturally based dialect is worth saving for posterity whether it is Appalachian, African American, or Viet Namese American or any other.  Dialect written well and accurately can be a joy to read and learn.  Dialect written poorly and inaccurately can be a painful caricature of a culture and a people.  There is nothing in the world worse than bad dialect written by a person who knows little or nothing about what they are attempting to create.  Thank God that Patricia C. McKissack knew what she was writing about.