Programs

BUILDING HOUSES OUT OF CHICKEN LEGS: BLACK WOMEN, FOOD AND POWER

A "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Remembrance and Reconciliation" Presentation

Using a recipe of scholarly analysis, personal interviews, film, advertisements, cookbooks and literature, Williams-Forson examines the complex role of the chicken in African American life, paying special attention to the connection between chickens and African American women. From slavery to the present, families have been fed with chickens raised by these women, who have made their livings cooking and serving in houses, restaurants, on the roadside, at the harbor and in churches. Adult or high school audiences. Requires a power point set-up or slide projector and screen.

Psyche Williams-Forson is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power, which won the American Folklore Society’s Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in American Studies from University of Maryland, College Park, where she also co-founded the Material Culture/Visual Culture Working Group.