Quotes by Marcie Cohen Ferris - Page 1

Americans are experiencing a general hunger for authentic regional cuisine, of which Southern food represents one of the best and oldest examples.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Hunger
Southern
Copy Quote
Southern food derives its strength from many cultures. It's a melding of food cultures from Native Americans, enslaved African-Americans, and Europeans.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Culture
Native American
Southern
Copy Quote
The study of foodways - the intersection of food and culture - addresses a central issue in the humanities: how we connect the great dramas of history with the lives of ordinary people.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Drama
Humanity
People
Copy Quote
The South is about the abundance, beauty, and richness of Southern culture, but also its dark underside. The history of Southern food reflects the history of slavery, of poverty, of the negotiation of power.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Culture
Dark
Southern
Copy Quote
Food is an important lens onto the civil rights movement. One of the central issues of the movement was the right to eat in places that served the public. This battle led to the lunch counter sit-ins, which became embattled, contested places.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Battle
Civil Rights
Important
Copy Quote
The working poor in the South are often blamed for their reliance on "traditional" Southern food, while in reality, most are eating the same heavily processed, cheap, convenience foods that the majority of working people eat across the United States.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
People
Reality
Southern
Copy Quote
If there was ever a food that had politics behind it, it is soul food. Soul food became a symbol of the black power movement in the late 1960s. Chef Marcus Samuelsson, with his soul food restaurant Red Rooster in Harlem, is very clear about what soul food represents. It is a food of memory, a food of labor.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Black
Memories
Soul
Copy Quote
Most Southerners recognize when a story about their own experience feels off-kilter or offensive. But Southerners are also fascinated by the way their region is presented in popular culture. It is exciting to see how filmmakers take great care to present worlds in which race, region, and food are deeply intertwined.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Care
Culture
World
Copy Quote
The core cuisine of Southern food is established in the plantation South, within the world of slavery. To understand the plantation table, we must understand the relationship of enslaved people to Africa, to historical trauma, and their central role in food production. Their voice is the most poignant, expressive voice in Southern cuisine.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Historical
People
Southern
Copy Quote
While I felt very much a Southerner as a child, being Jewish gave me an outsider's perspective. People look at region in a variety of ways, and I always paid attention to food. Food rises above other things for me. From a young age, I saw food as a barometer of cultural identity, and I was fascinated by how people defined themselves through their food traditions.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Children
People
Perspective
Copy Quote
In studying food, you embrace everything. Food exposes the long, complex history of the South - slavery, Jim Crow segregation, class struggle, extreme hunger, sexism, and disenfranchisement. These issues are revealed through food encounters, and they contrast this with the pleasure and the inventiveness of Southern cuisine. Food is always at the heart of daily life in the South.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Heart
Long
Struggle
Copy Quote
Southern food that appears in contemporary popular culture is so exaggerated that it's hardly recognizable to most Southerners. This enriching of Southern food - fatter, richer, more over the top - is what we typically see on TV, in Hollywood films, and in Southern-style or country-themed chains like Cracker Barrel. Southern food becomes a caricature, like characters and props in a reality TV show.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Character
Reality
Southern
Copy Quote
Terroir - the taste of place - was important from the early South of the first Indian, African, and Europeans to the nineteenth-century South. During that time, Southerners ate far more locally and seasonally, from the ground they knew and grew up on. That idea connects back to today. You are a place. And as a Southerner, the food you place in your body speaks of your personal history, and of the broader Southern history.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Important
Southern
Today
Copy Quote
I think about what I eat every day. I try to eat as locally as I can and as healthily as I can. When you prepare a historic recipe that could as easily been eaten in the 1800s as in 2014, it is a powerful act. When you take that food and its associated memory and put it in your body, it becomes part of who you are. While most people do not think about it consciously, there is an honoring of history that happens during that meal.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Memories
Powerful
Thinking
Copy Quote
When I'm asked to define "Southern food," I usually turn that question back to my audience and ask them what they think. I hear responses like fried chicken, catfish, barbecue, collard greens, and sweet potatoes. These are excellent examples, because they are historically grounded. You can trace each dish back to the people who brought these food traditions to the South. Today, these foods are central to the core culinary grammar of the American South.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
People
Sweet
Thinking
Copy Quote
Historically, women's voices were central to food narratives, yet they were marginalized, and what happened at the table, the kitchen, the garden, and the fields was silenced. I'm very interested in how food appears in the historical record and animates our understanding of the South. It provides texture both to the past and to our contemporary experience. My work is not about discovering new voices, but rather it encourages voices that have been silenced to come forward and speak a little louder.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Garden
Past
Understanding
Copy Quote
If you live in the South, you are often a very short distance from a garden, or even a farm owned by your family or by your neighbor's family. When I was a child, even though I grew up in an era of highly processed food, the grocery store sold local field peas, lima beans, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes. While there is a deep sense of place in the South - and the foods of this place - I don't want to present a pastoral vision of the contemporary South. The majority of Southerners cannot access fresh, local, affordable food.
Marcie Cohen Ferris /
Children
Distance
Sweet
Copy Quote

Related Authors

Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Napoleon Bonaparte
Military Commander
Tuesday, Aug 15, 1769
Saturday, May 05, 1821
John Keats
Poet
Saturday, Oct 31, 1795
Friday, Feb 23, 1821
Steven Wright
Comedian
Tuesday, Dec 06, 1955
Stephen Covey
Author
Monday, Oct 24, 1932
Monday, Jul 16, 2012
Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor
Saturday, Apr 26, 0121
Friday, Mar 17, 0180
Dolly Parton
Singer-Songwriter
Saturday, Jan 19, 1946
Nelson Mandela
Former President Of South Africa
Thursday, Jul 18, 1918
Thursday, Dec 05, 2013
Billy Graham
Professional Wrestler
Monday, Jun 07, 1943
Robert Frost
Poet
Thursday, Mar 26, 1874
Tuesday, Jan 29, 1963
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
John F. Kennedy
35Th U.s. President
Tuesday, May 29, 1917
Friday, Nov 22, 1963
George Carlin
Comedian
Wednesday, May 12, 1937
Sunday, Jun 22, 2008
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991

View All Quotes

Top Authors

Isaac Newton
Physicist
Sunday, Jan 04, 1643
Monday, Mar 31, 1727
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essayist
Wednesday, May 25, 1803
Thursday, Apr 27, 1882
John F. Kennedy
35Th U.s. President
Tuesday, May 29, 1917
Friday, Nov 22, 1963
Steve Jobs
Entrepreneur
Thursday, Feb 24, 1955
Wednesday, Oct 05, 2011
Jordan Peterson
Psychologist
Albert Camus
Author
Friday, Nov 07, 1913
Monday, Jan 04, 1960
Saint Augustine
Saint
Saturday, Nov 13, 0354
Wednesday, Aug 28, 0430
Charles Spurgeon
Preacher
Thursday, Jun 19, 1834
Sunday, Jan 31, 1892
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Muhammad Ali
Professional Boxer
Saturday, Jan 17, 1942
Friday, Jun 03, 2016
Pope Francis
Thursday, Dec 17, 1936
Oprah Winfrey
Media Proprietor
Friday, Jan 29, 1954
Deepak Chopra
Author
Wednesday, Oct 22, 1947
Julius Caesar
Roman Dictator
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970

View All Authors

Marcie Cohen Ferris Quotes - Page 1

App & Tools

Related Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page