african american women household employees

As African American women left the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed, 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. As employment opportunities expanded in the twentieth century, most African American women chose to leave cooking for more lucrative and less oppressive manufacturing, clerical, or professional positions. Through letters, autobiography, and oral history, Sharpless evokes African American women's voices from slavery to the open economy, examining their lives at work and at home.

Cora Jenkins works as a maid to support her family, the only African American family in a small Iowa town. Cora transfers her love for dead daughter to the daughter of her white employer, and Cora's love emboldens her to defy her employer.

Theodora is the matriarch of a family that has grown into "an insufferable bunch of truculent knuckleheads." While she's finally gotten them all together in South Carolina to celebrate, this Christmas looks nothing like the extravagant homey holidays of her childhood. Luckily someone shows up to help Theodora with pockets full of common sense and Gullah magic to make Theodora's Christmas the miracle it's meant to be. -- Publisher.