Yams: The Power That Be

Today I want to focus our attention on a vegetable deeply rooted in our culinary tradition. In the tapestry of Black culinary traditions, certain staples stand out, weaving a story of heritage, survival, and community. If you ask any brother or sister about what they think is the most important vegetable in our community, chances are, the sweet potato will top their list. It's a symbol of comfort and versatility often followed closely by the humble green bean. Yet and still, the esteem for the sweet potato mirrors an even deeper connection within the African diaspora, particularly when we turn our gaze to West Africa—the cradle of Black food tradition—where the yam holds a similar place of honor.

Despite their shared value across culinary landscapes, yams and sweet potatoes are shrouded in a cloud of misconception, the most common being the interchangeable use of their names. Though both root vegetables grow underground and share similarities in cultivation, they diverge significantly in taste, texture, and nutrition. This article aims to explore the origin, significance, and impact of the yam and sweet potato, two of the most important crops that have nourished generations across the African diaspora, even in the darkest of days.

The Yam’s Origin

The significance of the yam is well documented. At a high level, it is the most cherished and respected crop in West Africa. After over 11,000 years, its cultivation and consumption extend far beyond the motherland, with varieties found in Asia, the Americas and the Caribbean, showcasing a global significance. The yam is believed to have originated in Africa and Asia, with the most important species, the white yam, coming from the African species known as Dioscorea rotundata. These early cultivations played a crucial role in the sustenance and development of some of the world’s most profound societies, providing a reliable food source that could be stored for extended periods, which ensured food security… a piece of it that is.

Yam cultivation is labor-intensive, requiring large fields to be cleared for the mounds they are planted in. This reflects the agricultural practices and environmental adaptations required of early African societies. Not to mention yams aren’t small by any measure. In fact, they make sweet potatoes look petite in comparison. Imagine having to uproot 6-10 pound masses out of the ground all day. Indeed, the effort underscores a cultural importance to yams, not just as a food source but as a cornerstone of societal structure and economy.

Cultural Significance

On that note let’s lean into the yam’s cultural significance. Over time the yam has become a deep-seated spiritual and social symbol, specifically through folklore and story-telling. Many cultures depict the yam in creation stories as a gift from God to sustain life, ensure fertility of the land and its people, and to help them endure through adversity.

The New Yam Festival celebrated across Igboland is also a testament to reverence of the yam. The festival marks the end of the farming season and the beginning of a new cycle, serving as a symbolic gesture of gratitude to the earth and the ancestors for a successful harvest. It’s a time of joy, renewal, and community bonding, reflecting the yam’s integral role in fostering social cohesion and continuity. Not only does the celebration bring in the spirit of bearing fruits but it casts a gravity that pulls each and every member of the community together. The festival imbues the yam with symbolic meaning in rituals and traditions, serving as offerings to ancestors and deities.

New yam festival: The celebration of thanksgiving, 2021, courtesy of thebiafraherald

The yam’s significance also extends to social hierarchies and gender roles within communities. It is often associated with masculinity and prosperity; the more yam a man can cultivate and store, the more wealth and status he accumulates. This is vividly illustrated in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”, where yam cultivation is a measure of a man’s success and his ability to provide.

Interestingly, however, yam consumption today is more or less influenced by socioeconomic factors. Analyses of consumption patterns have shown that higher income is a bigger indicator of yam consumption than by whether or not a region produces yam. Yam is consequently a little more expensive given its high production cost (remember all those mounds?), which positions them in some places as a status symbol rather than a staple for daily sustenance. Cassava and plantain are often used as substitutes, specifically in yam preparations such as pounded yam.

In contemporary culture, the symbolism of yams has transcended geographical boundaries, finding expression in American literature, music, and art. The reference of yams in Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta '' and Masego’s yearning depicted in “Yamz '' illustrate the legacy and multifaceted significance of the crop, symbolizing power, wealth, and fulfillment. Through this deep-rooted history and cultural significance, yams continue to be a vital element of African heritage and food security across the diaspora, embodying traditions, values, innovation, and social structures that have been passed down through generations. There was a point in time, however, when the yam crossed paths with the sweet potato, a crop originating in the Americas, and the two became intertwined.

The difference between yam and sweet potato, 2023, courtesy of Marie Viljoen and Randy Gollin.

How Yam Became Sweet Potato

Before I get too deep into it, let me set the record straight: sweet potatoes are not yams and yams are not sweet potatoes. They are in fact, two distinctly different vegetables that became intertwined in the midst of chattel slavery in America.

Sweet potatoes are indigenous to Central and South America, having already been a staple crop in the Americas long before European colonization. Its cultivation dates back thousands of years as well, with the sweet potato playing a significant role in the diets of the Indigenous Americans, who called it okeepenavk. With the arrival of Europeans and the Columbian Exchange, sweet potatoes (like yams) were among the foods that crossed the oceans and enriched diets across the world.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade brought millions of Africans along with their culinary traditions, agricultural knowledge, and cultural practices into North America. Slavers would fill their cargo with as much yam as they had Africans to keep the enslaved nourished on the journey across the Atlantic. It is also a crop that doesn’t perish easily when stored under the right conditions. Ship records even show evidence of voyages from West Africa specifically being planned with the yam harvest cycle in mind. The yam is the last piece of home that Africans could hold onto on their voyage, jacketed in a thin layer of the very earth they were pulled from.

Since they were separated from their homeland, they were forced to adapt to a new environment, including its available food sources. The closest thing to a yam that they had access to was the sweet potato, which like a yam, was tuberous and could be cooked similarly. This sense of familiarity provided comfort in an otherwise harsh world.

They ingeniously incorporated sweet potatoes into their sustenance crops and cuisine, roasted thim in hot ashes – a method that was both necessary under the conditions of slavery and a continuation of African culinary tradition. This method of cooking sweet potatoes not only preserved the nutrients but also imbued them with a rich, smoky flavor, reminiscent of roasted yams back home. Of course, in order to keep up with the myth of African inferiority, the white supremacist narrative would describe this process, and thus the cooks themselves, as primitive and unremarkable. This dismissal, however, did not prevent the gradual integration of these culinary practices into the broader Southern cuisine.

Coal roasted sweet potatoes, 2023, courtesy of Mary Frances-Heck

Ironically, sweet potatoes would go on to become one of the most prominent and important dishes of Thanksgiving, the quintessentially [white] American holiday that symbolizes the nation’s colonial roots. White planters would market their sweet potatoes as “yams” as a means to gain an edge over their competitors, resulting in today’s confusion as to why the two are used interchangeably. Sweet potato pie, candied sweet potatoes, and sweet potato casserole would go on to become dishes that signify the American South. Lex Pryor boldly paints the irony of Black American culinary pilfering when he says “the dirty secret to Southern American cooking is that almost any food Black people ate eventually became food white people ate too”, underscoring a broader pattern of cultural denigration turned appropriation. Much like many aspects of Blackness, they are initially marginalized and ridiculed, only to be later embraced for the sake of incorporating into the national identity.

Conclusion

The journey of the sweet potato from a substitute for the African yam to a cornerstone of Southern cuisine embodies the resilience and ingenuity of Black American culinary traditions. It stands as a testament to the ways in which food transcends its utility to become a symbol of cultural identity, heritage, and shared history. Through the lens of the sweet potato, we can explore themes of adaptation, survival, and the complex dynamics of cultural exchange, offering insights into the broader narrative of African and American history and the indelible impact of Black American culture on the fabric of American cuisine.