The Sweet Potato Connection
Text and Photos by Jennie Chaplin
During one of our frequent conversations about preparing and enjoying food, my sister and I turned our discussion to the sweet potato, a tuberous delight. I told my her that I would dress my treat with cinnamon. She dismissed the cinnamon and stressed her preference for a little butter.
My chat with my sister about the delicious sweet potato became nostalgic as we recalled the various sweet potato recipes that infused our childhood and culture growing up on the peninsula of Charleston, South Carolina, during the 1970s. We both remembered hearing that eating these sweet delicacies in moderation and exercising regularly aid in the prevention of some physical and mental ailments. We also reminisced about the sweet potato pies made by our mother and the sweet potato poon prepared by our great aunt. Sometimes referred to as pone, especially in the Caribbean, sweet potato poon is a baked casserole dessert consisting of grated sweet potato, eggs, milk and various spices. When I inquired about the recipe for sweet potato poon from sister, she retorted, “I don’t give out recipes.” Indeed, she is cagey about her culinary secrets.
My mother and great aunt were both economically independent and culturally rooted women. They never used written instructions in the kitchen. They knew exactly how much cinnamon, sugar, butter, milk, eggs and nutmeg to include with the sweet potato pie, as well as the ingredients and the lengthy process used to make their special homemade pie crusts. They considered baking with purchased pie crusts like cheating; it would have been too easy. Did I mention that my sister possesses these same culinary skills? By the end of our phone conversation, she and I had spun tales from our memories of this simple root, tales that revealed its cultural, historic, economic, and nutritional influence on our community.
Sweet potato pie created by Shonda Chaplin.
The sweet potato, or “sweet tata,” as we call it in the Gullah culture, was a staple in my childhood and is still a basic in my own household today because it was and remains a major crop harvested by Gullah communities. The Gullah culture and language were developed by descendants of enslaved Africans—predominately people from West Africa—who were brought to America primarily because of their skills in the cultivation of rice. The geographical location of Gullahs along the coasts of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida enabled them to sustain their language, foodways, customs and spiritual practices throughout slavery and until the present time.
Although Gullahs, like many people, use the terms yams and sweet potatoes interchangeably, these two roots are different. Michael W. Twitty, a culinary historian and author of Cooking Gene, distinguishes between the two delicacies: “Yam is definitely a term from Western Africa, especially Senegambia, where in several West Atlantic languages it refers to the verb, nyam, to eat. In Wolof, sweet cassava, which looks more like sweet potatoes than authentic yams, is called nyam-bi or the thing that you eat.”
Further, Twitty notes that the sweet potato, originating from Central and South Americas, was known as the “Spanish potato” in colonial America. The first time I experienced an actual yam was at a West African restaurant, and I remember its interior being whiter and starchier than the sweet potato.
Once when speaking with a historian of the Gullah culture, I asked why we use the terms yam and sweet potato interchangeably. I was told that the sweet potato is a reminder of what we (enslaved Africans) brought from the Old World to the New World. Twitty also recognizes the cultural nature of the term yam.
“This term [yam] is preserved in Gullah as well other African Creole languages like Jamaican Creole,” says Twitty. “Most enslaved people preferred white [yams] because the starchy drier taste most resembled the taste of sweet cassava or tropical yams.”
Therefore, to honor those West African ancestral connections, Gullah people recognize sweet tata and other foods as a major part of our cultural identity. This is reflected in the way my mother raised me. Weekly, she sent me and my sisters to a small market that sold collards, turnips, sweet potatoes, and other fresh fruits and vegetables grown from the owner’s farm. Because of her upbringing on a rural farm, my mother saw high value in sweet potatoes and other farm-grown vegetables because of their freshness. In fact, I learned about the “farm to table” movement long before it was “chic” or popular, as it is these days. Given an allotted amount of money and clear instructions for the purchase, my sisters and I selected vegetables that were listed only in memory. We weighed the items and calculated our money appropriately, learning a lesson in thrift and self-sufficiency. We took pride in seeking out the best looking vegetables in the bins so that my mother could prepare many traditional Gullah meals, like okra soup (which is similar to gumbo but made with a tomato base instead of a roux), and other Southern African American meals. At Sunday dinners, as we sat at the dinner table, my mother boasted about the wonderful job we did in selecting sweet potatoes, collards and other edibles.
This cultural carryover, the love for sweet potatoes, gets more pronounced during the holiday seasons and at events like the MOJA Cultural Arts Festival in Charleston, which celebrates the contributions African American and Caribbean cultures made to the American and international landscapes. However, these carryovers are also present in our everyday use of sweet potatoes in dishes such souffles, pies and casseroles, among other inventions. In this way, sweet potato dishes can be served as special sides during holidays or at Sundays meals, or for someone like me, with more limited culinary skills, they can be a simply made, everyday dishes to pop out of the oven. In both cases, connections to the past resonate—connections to an African heritage and to a childhood comfort.
When I prepare these simple meals and reminisce with my sister, the sweet potato root fills me with gratitude for the way my mother instilled early lessons of sustainability and independence in us. This food played a significant role in shaping my cultural identity, especially since it represents how the Gullah community is connected to the earth.
