Last Thursday, May 1, DU hosted A Celebration of Soul Food in the Anderson Academic Commons, featuring guest speaker Adrian Miller, author of “Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time.” According to Andrea Howland, the community relations manager of University Libraries, the event focused on various aspects of African-American history, geography, tradition, economy and customs.
Howland said she felt the event went very well, with about 100 people in attendance. The event was one of those funded by the Campus Climate Fund.
“With the goal of fostering inclusiveness and collaboration, I was pleased that we had planning help and event participation from a variety of people, including undergrads, graduate students, faculty and staff,” said Howland. “While the focus was African-American cuisine, history and culture, we had participation from many people who were not African-American.”
Along with Miller’s talk, the event had authentic soul food catered by Two Sistahs Eats-n-Treats, recommended by Miller. The menu included fried chicken, creole broiled fish, mixed greens, black eyed peas, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler, sweet tea and hibiscus aid.
There were also performances by Amber Bush and Idiosingcrasies. Bush, a senior majoring in jazz vocal performance and biology, sang “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” which is sometimes referred to as the black national anthem. The student a cappella group Idiosingcrasies sang “Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, which was a popular anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.
“I called the event a celebration and I think having the music and the food helped make it festive, and allowed the audience more ways to experience African American culture,” said Howland.
During his talk, Miller described how he traveled around the country researching the history of soul food in African-American culture for his book. According to Howland, Miller used the Husted Cookery Collection in the DU library for some of his research, which includes 10,000 historic cooking-related items and community published cookbooks. Miller also said he sampled soul food from restaurants all over the country, traveling to 33 cities in 15 states.
Miller said that before he wrote this book, he originally went to law school, but he decided that it was not for him and sought a different career path. In 2000, he realized that there were numerous cookbooks from different cultures, but a book about soul food did not exist, so he sought to learn as much about its culture and origins as possible.
The book includes chapters on the most popular, basic elements of an authentic soul food meal, along with recipes for traditional, healthy and gourmet soul food dishes. According to Howland, Miller sold all of the books he brought to the event, which were priced at $32.
On Friday, May 2, Miller also won the James Beard Foundation’s book award. The day after the Celebration of Soul Food he traveled to New York for the ceremony as one of three finalists. According to Howland, James Beard was a famous chef, and the award is a high honor within the food industry.
On Friday, Howland said she also had a DU staff member stop by her office to thank her for the event.
“She said that an African-American student said to her last night that the Celebration of Soul Food was the first thing she had experienced at DU that acknowledged her race and her history,” said Howland. “Hearing that made my day.”
