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Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America’s First Food
In Savage Barbecue, Andrew Warnes looks at the history of what he calls the first American food. He takes us back to Columbus’ first meetings with the natives of Hispaniola in order to present a historical context for the etymology of the word Barbecue. He explores the various iterations of the spelling ranging from barbacoa, which today entails not only the act of cooking over the fire but the specific regional variants that have developed. The book has four chapters with each one providing a specific way of looking at the historical background, the art, and act of barbecue. Warnes explains how the word barbecue came into the English language by presenting us with the concept that barbecue as we know it developed out of the European fascination with an indigenous form of food preparation that while barbaric to European eyes is at the same time liberating. It allowed them to look at the purveyors of the craft as being exceptional while at the same time they could locate them within a Eurocentric view of status that placed the Caribes and Taino tribes within a framework of civilization based on Spanish and English superiority.

His narrative showing the rising popularity of barbecue and its transmutation from an indigenous American cooking style to a popular party food both in Europe and later in America presents an interesting view of the ties between barbecue and southern life during and after slavery. It emphasizes that barbecue in the context in which we now know it is not a wholly American cooking style. Although barbecue may have started as an American cooking style and concept, he says that European influence changed it dramatically. He explores how Europeans racialized the barbecue and through their acceptance and desire to enjoy the taste of barbecued pork were able to express their supremacy over those whom they utilized to provide the labor for the preparation and cooking of these time consuming feasts. He makes it clear that in the process of racializing first the Native Americans and then African-Americans, Europeans and their Anglo-American descendants use the barbecue as a means to maintain and perpetuate their superior status of being civilized in comparison to the barbarity of the others. He presents a representation of barbecue illustrated via some of the paintings and drawing of the colonial period. They show the European fascination with the concept of the barbaric by illustrating the cooking of human limbs on a wooden grill while at the same time portraying the exoticness of the process of cooking meats and fish over fire.

When Warnes starts the discussion of the changing nature of barbecue in the South, the book addresses areas of contemporary knowledge that most readers will have some familiarity with. However, the reader will face issues related to race and discrimination that are an intricate part of the story of barbecue. In looking at who has the responsibility of preparing, cooking, and serving the barbecued pork, he seeks to paint a picture of how much more there is to barbecue than just a cooking style or even a word with meaning. He shows how it intertwines within definitions of culture and manifests cultural continuity and change throughout its history. He illustrates the regional differences and pride that arises around the act of barbecuing. He presents a concise view of how barbecue has changed with and throughout the history of America and how it can never be defined as just the act of preparing food on a grill. Warnes makes it clear that barbecue is an attempt to express nothing more than European need to look at practices that occur in cultures outside of the Eurocentric norm as savage and barbaric, thus providing them a way to discuss the violent nature of those who created the cooking style while maintaining and asserting their perceived superiority above them. Warnes illustrates that throughout its history the term and the act of barbecue is related to violence, whether real or imagined, and that this concept is still present today and plays a part of the ritual that is reenacted every time we light a barbecue grill and place beef, pork, or fish on it.

I feel that Warnes does a commendable job of examining the history of one of the most popular food forms in the United States and around the world. There is no you can go place in the world where the idea of throwing some meat on the barbecue does not play a role. It plays a role in most male bonding rituals throughout the western world and it is an opportunity for recreating a mythological hunter past. I think what Warnes has done is present a complete and clear analysis of how and why barbecue has taken on a mystique and history that sees it as the American cooking style. His descriptions of the first encounters of Columbus crew with the Native Americans cooking of iguanas and fish on the beach of Cuba illustrates just how much of an influence Europe had on the development of barbecue. He illustrates how it became intertwined with the racist attitudes of Europeans towards the New World and the ongoing racism that would continue throughout the colonial period and on into the formation and growth of the United States. Warnes has constructed a very informative treatise on this popular cooking form that both makes the reader appreciate the historical ramifications, while at the same time providing a different view of barbecue that would not normally be revealed to the average person who walks into their local BBQ establishment. It is clear that Warnes is not trying to dissuade anyone from enjoying this most delicious of cuisines, but it is also clear that he feels it is quite essential to understand the history behind the food, the word, and the power Euro-centric worldview played in the etymology of barbecue. I enjoyed the book and I feel that it is a text worth reading by anyone who is interested in learning more about how barbecue came to be a popular form of cooking and eating. Warnes’ careful analysis of the act of cooking on a grill transports the reader to another time and place in which they can come to understand and sympathize with the people who actually prepare these meals. It provides a strong and necessary view of the act of barbecuing that will make you look at preparing a meal on a grill in a more subdued and introspective way.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding how culture is affected through the simple act of cooking, and to anyone who is a fan or appreciator of barbecue. I feel that it will not only give the reader a great appreciation for all those who work very hard to provide this cuisine to a clamoring public, but it will also provide greater understanding on how cultural exchange played a major role in the creation of what many have come to see as a truly American cultural phenomenon.

Warnes, Andrew. Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America’s First Food, The University of Georgia Press, Athens & London. (2008) ISBN 13:978-0-8203-3109-6 ISBN 10: 0-8203-3109-0 Review of Book performed as part of Indiana University E621 Food and Culture Graduate Class in The new Anthropology of Food PhD program