Rice
- by Nikky Finney
Searching for meaning in Rice
- By Chela Kaplan, KET
Nikky Finney builds with words like a child plays with blocks. She uses them to construct her own unique structure of images, stacking them to suit her meaning.
As a reader unfamiliar with reading poetry and certainly new to African American words and history, I found Finney's poetry fascinating and lyrical. I marveled at the images her words conjured for me as I read Rice. Often a poem would beg to be read aloud and I would oblige, enjoying the sound of the words in my ears. I would read and re-read a poem, writing down the words I enjoyed or the ones that I didn't understand. When I didn't understand her references, I would look up the word in the dictionary or on the Web.
Even if you are an experienced reader of poetry, or understand the African American heritage better than I, you still might find my discoveries interesting to explore.
Rice is divided into three sections: "Heel - Toe," "Thresh," and "Winnow." Finney explains each reference, sometimes presenting more than one definition.
First, I searched for references to Finney's South Carolinian ancestry and the history of "Carolina Gold" rice.
A description of South Carolina rice cultivation and history from Middleton Place, a carefully preserved 18th-century plantation
Map and Carolina Gold info
As one might expect in a book called Rice, there are many references to food and cooking.
Several interesting links are:
What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking - Mrs. Abby Fisher was the first Black American woman to record her own recipes.
Coast gardening and hoppin John info
Several Carolina rice cookbooks
Goose with Carolina Gold rice recipe
Southern recipes from a ThinkQuest Black History project
The poem "Cotton Tea" refers to Cotton root which is used for medicinal purposes to induce abortion. A particular species only grows in the low islands and sea-coast of Georgia and South Carolina.
Finney often speaks of cowrie or sacred cowrie. Not knowing what cowrie was, I turned to the Web and discovered that cowrie is a shelled mollusk.
Cowrie shells were used as money and to make jewelry in Africa and have spiritual significance.
Beautiful pics of shelled mollusks
Kuba beadwork, beaded belts with cowrie shells
Daufuskie is an island located between Hilton Head Island, SC and Savannah, GA
This isolation led to a unique African/American culture called Gullah.
Overview of Daufuskie Island, SC
History of Daufuskie Island, SC
The Soul of Daufuskie - 60-year-old Mary Fields School among islanders' most cherished institutions
Slaves in the Family is the story of one man's exploration of his family's slave-owning past and his search for descendants of the people his ancestors kept as slaves.
Making peace with the past
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