Review of High on the Hog by Jessica B. Harris

One of my many regrets in life is how much time I’ve spent procrastinating.

As I work on this book and movie blog on the side (yes, I do this for fun, although I do make a cute income off of this blog via the ads that you can see on the screen—support your local bloggers and websites by just ignoring them and letting these things run in the background!), I’ve come to realize that there are so many books I waited years to get to.

And man, once you finally get to them, they’re so satisfying to read. A lot of books that I am so excited about get pushed to the side because there are always new books and releases to get to, and there are only a set number of hours in the day. I wish humans didn’t have to sleep—I would literally spend all twenty-four hours just reading and watching sometimes.

High on the Hog is one of those books I waited on for so long. I watched the Netflix series when it first came out, and back then I was considering doing a PhD in history just to focus on the Silk Road and the cross migration of culinary traditions. That said, I did not go down that path, but I almost got a job at Stephen Satterfield’s Whetstone Journal (I made it to the final interview with him and was not selected, which is life).

I finally got around to this book after I finished my master’s thesis on colonial and postcolonial Korean women’s literary history. And like I said before, it was so satisfying to get to.

Let’s get into the review before I ramble too much!

An insight into African American culinary histories and the lineages in which it comes from.

As mentioned before, I had already seen the television show High on the Hog, which means some of the information mentioned in the book I was aware of. It was just presented in a written form, but I found the two to compliment each other so well in the end!

Throughout this text, Harris often goes in order of African American culinary histories. We begin largely with Africa and the slave ships, which really is the beginning of African American history. You cannot tell the story of African Americans without going back to the beginning.

Harris utilizes facts and historical figures to show how certain traditions came about. Each chapter focuses on a different point in AA history, which means we’re really getting the deep dive in this book. However, it’s not too academic.

When I say that, I mean the writing is very accessible to those outside of graduate programs and scholars. As someone who has spent a lot of time recently with academic publishing, I find those books to be so dense, especially if you’re not familiar with the subject before diving into it.

Anyways, this book is for anyone. Truly. From the early days of AA history, we see how okra and black eyed peas became staples early on, as well as the gradual creation of what is now known as soul food.

Looking at Southern food, a lot of it truly is AA and Black food, making it rooted in the systems in place. From meats like ham hocks, or fried chicken, a lot of these staples are now considered indicators of southern cuisine. We need to acknowledge their roots through books like these, as denying them are a form of erasure.

There’s also an interesting blending happening the further we get along. I always find it interesting to trace how African American culture has developed regionally, especially with the Great Migration in the 1920s. But even before then, Harris has a way to look at Black cuisine and its historical developments.

Overall Thoughts

I’m glad I finally got around to reading this. I love learning about African American history in general, but my knowledge pre-1860s is a bit rough.

Adding food into the mix is a unique cultural element, as it also tells a story of resilience. In graduate school I took a seminar on African travel literature through the lens of the slave trade, so we read both sides of it. A lot of those texts were from the 1800s, but even then I noticed how food played such an important role.

Perhaps these are small lessons to dig deeper into why things are. Why are we eating the plates in front of us? Why did it come to us and how?

Go read this if you have not already!

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