1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910785339403321

Autore

Sharpless Rebecca

Titolo

Cooking in other women's kitchens [[electronic resource] ] : domestic workers in the South, 1865-1960 / / Rebecca Sharpless

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chapel Hill, : University of North Carolina Press, c2010

ISBN

1-4696-1102-3

0-8078-9949-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (304 p.)

Collana

The John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture

Disciplina

331.4/816415

Soggetti

African American women household employees - Southern States - History

Women cooks - Southern States - Social conditions

African American women - Southern States - Social conditions

Southern States Race relations History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; 1 I Done Decided I'd Get Me a Cook Job: Becoming a Cook; 2 From Collards to Puff Pastry: The Food; 3 Long Hours and Little Pay: Compensation and Workers' Resistance; 4 Creating a Homeplace: Shelter, Food, Clothing, and a Little Fun; 5 Mama Leaps off the Pancake Box: Cooks and Their Families; 6 Gendering Jim Crow: Relationships with Employers; 7 If I Ever Catch You in a White Woman's Kitchen, I'll Kill You: Expanding Opportunities and the Decline of Domestic Work; Acknowledgments; Appendix: Cook's Wages, 1901-1960; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

As African American women left slavery and the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed in white employers' homes, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture. Rebecca Sharpless argues that, in the face of discrimination, long workdays, and low wages, African American cooks worked to assert measures of control over their own lives and to maintain spaces for their own families despite the demands of employers and the restriction