ABSTRACT

This essay examines how Charles Ball’s Slavery in the United States used food and foodways to articulate the grief of enslaved fathers as well as to define the meaning of fatherhood for enslaved men. The article builds on a growing historical literature that explores enslaved manhood. Unlike most of this literature that largely focus on how enslaved men leveraged the provider/protective role, this essay argues that food enabled the narrator to critique and express the emotional cost of enslavement as well as the complex meanings that fatherhood held for enslaved men.