Maya Angelou Through the Lens of Food
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Maya Angelou was born in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri but lived in two worlds: urban black St Louis which she described as “a gold-rush town” with speak easies, gambling joints, and houses of prostitution and Stamps, Arkansas a country town with a saw mill, cotton, gin, and lots of farm land. Angelou's seven autobiographies and cook books demonstrate she had a serious interest in food. For example, in Stamps she tells us that we harvested peanuts “raw from the field and roasted [them] in the bottom of the oven on cold nights. The rich scents used to fill the house and we were always expected to eat too many. But that was a Stamps custom” Angelou recalls. “In St. Louis, peanuts were brought in paper bags and mixed with jelly beans, which meant that we ate the salt and sugar together and I found them a delicious treat.”
