Christopher Carter’s The Spirit of Soul Food is a deeply enlightening discussion of food, foodways, and how the lived experiences of people can shape and be shaped by what they grow, acquire, and eat. Carter’s approach, informed by his own background as a scholar, a pastor, and a vegan, is both interdisciplinary and rigorous in its analysis. The book’s topic is the manifold current and potential meanings of soul food in Black experience, but its method is what really sets The Spirit of Soul Food apart. Carter uses deep theorizing to get at the heart and roots of food injustice as a form of racial injustice, which of course it is, forming what he calls “a decolonial theological anthropology” (xi). By identifying the issues at play in food and racial injustice as epistemological, the only effective response is to “lay the epistemological foundation for the development of new liberatory and antioppressive foodways” (24). This facet is the real power of The Spirit of Soul Food. The book is strongly advocative, but it transcends the usual simplicities of popular discourse and pitfalls of undertheorized academic advocacy by bringing lived experience and theory together, recognizing that people live their lives in and through theory lenses.
In addition to drawing together the supposedly disparate poles of lived experience and theorized analysis, Carter discusses food as a lived and theorized thing up and down the scale from the pan-human all the way down to the individual. And he does not shy away from the difficult work, putting himself directly in the narrative of advocating for food justice. Each of the book’s body chapters and the conclusion is capped off with a recipe, a vegan version of a soul food classic, including Carter’s takes on red beans and rice, collard greens, gumbo, corn bread, and peach crisp, while one chapter ends with mention of watermelon as a food item. Not a recipe obviously, as it is just one ingredient, but watermelon provides an opportunity to ruminate on meaning, which should, by that point in the book, not come as a surprise to the reader. Each recipe is placed at the end of a chapter to be a reason for, and result of, a rumination on meaning. These ruminations fit very neatly with the focus of the book on epistemologies as a way into the depths of food and racial justice and injustice, as epistemologies are, at their core, the systems by which people make knowledge and meaning. In the process, Carter provides his own scale, examples of his own negotiation of soul food as a vegan, Black, scholarly, and ministerial person.
The introduction lays out the interdisciplinary approach that The Spirit of Soul Food embraces, by delving into the overlap and interplay of knowing, eating, and believing. Chapter 1 gives some historical background to Black American foodways and makes explicit that “there are different ways of knowing” across time and space, the variety of which we ignore at the peril of limiting our ability to know. Chapter 2 digs into systems to see how food justice and injustice, while lived at the everyday human level, are shaped and controlled at the systemic level. Chapter 3 makes clear that epistemological and taxonomic foundations of coloniality are found in the flawed assumptions of cultural evolution and hierarchy. Chapter 4 brings the call to action to the fore, arguing that the thinking and analysis contained in the previous chapters require a moral and ethical response that centers on making food justice a priority and a norm for all. The short conclusion chapter does not need to do much, as Carter’s line of thought is laid out over the course of the book clearly, thoughtfully, analytically, and powerfully. Like dessert, the final chapter just tops everything off in a satisfying and summative way.
The strong advocative stance of The Spirit of Soul Food may turn off some teachers and professors from considering the book for their classes. That would be a shame. Carter demonstrates that the real power of theory and analysis, which are stereotypically the province of the classroom, is that they are not separate from people’s lived experiences, and that expertise does not just inform a good classroom discussion—it informs and is informed by actual people’s actual everyday lives. The Spirit of Soul Food would be an excellent addition to any class centering on food and identity, on race and ethnicity, on justice, or on epistemology.
--------
[Review length: 740 words • Review posted on November 19, 2022]