Why Barbecue Is an Essential Part of Black History为何烧烤在黑人历史中不可或缺

Every summer of my child and teenagehood was peppered with cookouts1. After the passing of my grandfather—the true patriarchal glue of that side of my family—the large， food-centric gatherings ceased. Last month was the third anniversary of his death and it got me thinking about these cookouts that took me years to really appreciate and cherish. How memories of eating pulled pork， ribs， chicken， hot dogs， and hamburgers would end up bringing me comfort when I least expected it. It really cemented the idea of barbecues being universal to the Black American experience.

户外烧烤填满了我童年和青少年的每个夏天。但当家族的真正父权纽带——我的祖父过世后，这些以食物为中心的大型聚会就销声匿迹了。上个月是他老人家的3周年忌日，一下子将我的思绪拉回到数年后才欣赏和珍视的烧烤聚会中。那些吃手撕猪肉、肋排、鸡肉、热狗和汉堡包的记忆，会在不经意间给我带来慰藉。我的经历切实强化了烧烤在美国黑人经历中普遍存在的观念。

Barbecue aka BBQ is an integral cuisine to Black history and， by default， American history. But its roots are traced to Indigenous Caribbeans. In Adrian Miller’s new book Black Smoke： African Americans and the United States of Barbecue， he writes that the earliest account of what we think of barbecue as today goes back to 1513 when Taíno， the Indigenous People of the Caribbean discovered Christopher Columbus and his crew stealing and eating all of their meats being cooked over green， wood fires—including rabbit， fish， and “serpents2，” which were believed to be iguanas.

烧烤，也被称为BBQ，是黑人历史不可或缺的佳肴，当然，也是美国历史中不可或缺的一部分，而其本源可以追溯到加勒比地区的原住民。阿德里安·米勒的新书《黑烟：非洲裔美国人和美国烧烤》中提到，我们今天所认为的烧烤的最早记录可以追溯到1513年，当时加勒比地区的土著民泰诺人发现克里斯托弗·哥伦布和他的船员偷吃了他们所有的肉。肉是用新鲜木柴生火烤制的，包括兔子、鱼和“大蛇”——当时的人们认为那是鬣蜥。

The exact origins of the word “barbeque” are a little unclear and messy， much like a good sauce. But the word “barbacoa，” which is where our current term is adapted from， is attributed to what the Spanish called the Indigenous Peoples’ way of cooking meats over a wooden platform.

barbeque一词的确切起源有些模糊和混乱，就像一种美味的酱料。但barbacoa一词，也就是barbeque的来源，据说来自西班牙人对当地原住民在木台上烹肉方法的称呼。

“When you hear about the early history of barbecue， the Native Americans are kind of a side note， right？” Miller tells us. “It’s just like， ‘Oh， some Europeans noticed how Native Americans were cooking and they took it over， added their European animals， took that from the Caribbean to the American South and barbecue was formed.’ And that just never really made sense to me because that ignores what Indigenous People and the American South were already doing before Europeans showed up.”

“当你听说烧烤的早期历史时，美洲原住民就像个注脚一样微乎其微，对吧？”米勒同我们讲，“就好像，‘哦，一些欧洲人注意到美洲原住民是如何烹饪的，他们就把它拿来，加上欧洲的动物食材，再从加勒比地区带到美国南方，于是烧烤就这样诞生了。’这对我而言根本没有道理，因为这忽略了原住民和美国南方人在欧洲人到来之前就已经在做的事。”

Similarly to how those Native American traditions have long been an afterthought， I noticed that contributions of African Americans made to the cuisine often still go unnoticed today， despite barbecue’s constant presence in my family at the hands of Black men and women.

就如这些美洲原住民的传统长期以来一直被忽视一样，我注意到，尽管在我的家庭中始终由黑人男女操持烧烤，但非洲裔美国人对这种菜肴的贡献直到今天仍时常不被重视。

“If we’re not in the media outlets in certain positions， we don’t get the opportunity to tell the stories in a real way. And I think that’s a long-time issue，” Conyers says. “The South has something to say. But if the media is not down there to see it， it’s missed. The major media outlets in America are in New York or the West Coast. The South is very rich， but we’re not present.”

科尼尔斯说：“如果我们不在媒体上担任特定职位，我们就没有机会真实地讲述这些故事。我认为这是一个长期存在的问题。南方人也有话要说，但如果主流媒体不深入南方实地去体会，就会错失真相。美国的主流媒体都在纽约或西海岸。南方有着丰富的文化和历史，但没人听见我们的声音。”

A majority of the information Conyers learned about the history and culture surrounding barbecue was told to him verbally， starting with a stunning realization that stemmed from a sketch of a pit from his father.

科尼尔斯了解到的关于烧烤历史文化的大部分信息，都是从口口相传中得来的。他最早的认识源于父亲画的烤坑草图，那幅图让他有了个惊人的发现。

“I was giving a lecture at Dillard University and I asked my father if he could draw a sketch of the pit he learned how to cook with because we didn’t take any pictures of when we were cooking barbecue as a kid，” he says. “He drew a pit of a hole in the ground where he cooked and when I looked at that pit and compared it to what those pictures in the 1930s， 1940s and the late 1800s looked like， it told me that my connection to barbecue was directly tied into slavery. My father didn’t do any research. He just did what was shared with him， and then as a cook， you learn to do things over time.”

“那时我在迪拉德大学做讲座，我问父亲能否把他学习烧烤用的烤坑画个草图，因为我们小时候做烧烤时没有拍过照片。”他说，“父亲就画了一个在地上挖的用于烧烤的坑，当我把这个坑和20世纪三四十年代以及19世纪晚期的照片作对比时，我发现我与烧烤的联系与奴隶制直接相关。我父亲没有做过任何研究。他只是做了别人教给他的事情，作为一名厨师，随着时间推移，这些事情都能学会。”

He then describes his next course of action after this discovery as a “wild goose chase3，” where he sought out all the information he could about Black people and barbecue. This brought him to reading through the WPA4 Slave Narratives in the Library of Congress for any evidence of barbecuing in the South. These documents contain more than 2，000 first-person accounts of former enslaved Africans transcribed from audio recordings.

有了这一发现，科尼尔斯描述他接下来寻找关于黑人和烧烤所有信息的行为无异于“大海捞针”。这使他开始在国会图书馆查阅美国公共事业振兴署的黑奴口述资料，以寻找烧烤发源于南方的证据。这些文件是由2000多份音频记录中转录而来，取自那些曾为奴隶的非裔美国人的第一人称陈述。