Watch Is Soul Food a Sacrament or a Sin? on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.
The event will take place on Thursday, January 10, at 7 p.m. at the MSU Communication Arts & Sciences Building, home of WKAR. The event is free, but advance registration is required. (Click here for more information and to make your free reservation.)
Guests will see a short preview of the film which will be aired in full January 14 at 10 p.m. on WKAR-TV. Immediately following the preview, guest panelists will discuss the film and its local relevance. Featured guests include Laura DeLind, Lorraine Weatherspoon and Andrea King Collier.
DeLind is a visiting assistant professor in the Residential College of Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. She currently works with the Allen Neighborhood Center to address the food needs of Eastside residents through a neighborhood farmers market, urban gardens and direct farmer-merchant-resident coalitions. She is also a member of MSU’s University Committee for a Sustainable Campus.
Weatherspoon is an associate professor and director of the Didactics Program in Dietetics at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on dietary, lifestyle and ecological factors in the risk, prevention and management of diet-related health disparities and chronic diseases. Her special interests include Type 2 diabetes, maternal and child nutrition, and nutrition in HIV/AIDS.
Collier, a Kellogg Health Fellow, is lead author of “The Black Women’s Guide to Black Men’s Health.” Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, Lansing State Journal and the magazines Essence, More and Ladies Home Journal, among others.
The Michigan State University Library will also be on site with related cookbooks from their extensive collection. A number of these feature soul food and some are very rare.
The documentary focuses on filmmaker Byron Hurt’s quest to learn more about the soul-food tradition and its relevance to black cultural identity. His exploration was inspired by his father’s lifelong love affair with the high-fat, calorie-rich traditional soul-food diet and his unwillingness to give it up even in the face of a life-threatening health crisis.
Hurt discovers that the relationship between African Americans and culinary dishes such as ribs, grits and fried chicken is culturally based, deep-rooted, complex and often deadly. Through candid interviews with soul-food cooks, historians and scholars, as well as doctors, family members and everyday people, “Soul Food Junkies” puts this culinary tradition under the microscope to examine both its positive and negative consequences.
WKAR Community Cinema is an ongoing film and discussion program affiliated with the television series “Independent Lens.” For additional information on for “Solar Mamas,” visit WKAR.org. Partners for this series are the MSU Women’s Resource Center and MSU Center for Gender in Global Context.
WKAR is part of Michigan State University’s College of Communication Arts & Sciences and includes WKAR-TV, WKAR Radio, WKAR.org, WKAR Radio Reading Service and WKAR Ready To Learn Service. WKAR is funded in large part by viewer and listener contributions with additional support from Michigan State University and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Watch Soul Food: Good to You vs. Good for You on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.
