The watermelon is for everyone

December 23, 2023 1:19 AM

I like this idea of sweet watermelons coexisting with bitter ones, each type influencing our perceptions. The watermelon is a generous fruit: the flesh of one can feed a dozen people and can parent hundreds of melons with its seeds. Cultures throughout the ages have, and still do, interpret the watermelon as a symbol of good luck and fertility, a plant whose great fecundity might be shared with you. But in the United States, more than a century of racial denigration has cloaked and clouded this primordial symbol of solidarity, generosity, and abundance, transforming it into something almost unpalatable for many Black people. Of course, the watermelon itself is not to blame, but throughout its botanical, cultural, and social history, it has been a vehicle for our ideas about community, survival, and what we owe the future. from Tell Me Why the Watermelon Grows
posted by chavenet (9 comments total)

There's a book I have, Past Imperfect, which looks at historical movies from a historian's perspective. Or, rather, multiple historians; the editors selected 60 films and asked a different historian to write about each one. (It's an awesome book, I strongly recommend it.)

One of the films they wrote about was Glory, the film from 1989 about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment comprised of African-American soldiers. In his essay, the historian calls attention to a short throwaway scene where the captain is training his soldiers on how to use a sword while riding a horse; they've set up a bunch of watermelons on poles, and the soldiers (one of which was played by Denzel Washington) practice riding past them and slicing the melons in half as they ride. The historian points out that the scene was taking place during the late fall or winter, at a time when watermelon CLEARLY could not have been in season. And so, he suggests, showing a bunch of African-American soldiers "killing" a bunch of watermelons was meant to have a definite alternate subtext.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:16 AM on December 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

As a white, late-Gen X American, I had simply missed the history of the the racist stereotypes about watermelon until Barack Obama was elected and suddenly that stuff was, as the article notes, in editorial cartoons in mainstream newspapers and jokes on late night shows. It still blows my mind. Who doesn't like watermelon and fried chicken? They're delicious.

The story of her mom painstakingly eating watermelon with a knife and fork so as to not look like some horrible minstrel show caricature is just heartbreaking. Can this kind of thing ever die, or will the white supremacists make sure it's always around to torture the next generation?

Here in Atlanta, with immigrants from all over the world, I would say that watermelon and fried chicken are things you could serve to anyone from anywhere, and even the vegans would be happy with the watermelon. I have a lot of Sudanese students, so I'm excited to add "watermelons are from Darfur" to my list of where are food came from.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:05 AM on December 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

A lot of fascinating (and depressing) history in there that I was only vaguely aware of - thanks for posting it!

the flesh of one can feed a dozen people

I knew one person who didn't eat watermelon: My dad. He grew up in the 1930s in dust bowl southern Saskatchewan, where, as he told it, a lard sandwich was about as decadent as treats got.

One day, finally, he got his first taste of watermelon. He took the whole thing to a hiding place and ate it all in one sitting, stuffing himself past any point of reason with the most delicious thing he had ever tasted.

He didn't describe what happened afterward, but you can imagine how you'd feel once the delirium of eating food meant for a dozen people wore off. After that, he said, he could never stand to eat watermelon again.
posted by clawsoon at 4:47 AM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

It still blows my mind. Who doesn't like watermelon and fried chicken? They're delicious.

I love those foods and I hate that people decided to taint them with stupid racism.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:04 AM on December 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks for posting, I agree with jenfullmoon. One of my earliest adventures was eating foods with other families, unfamiliar exciting food. They shared with me, a curious little kid, and they'd laugh at the faces I made tasting hot sauce, or dried seaweed, for the first time. It helped me tune out the things my parents said at the dinner table, form my own opinions, create my own mental palate as much as a physical one.
posted by winesong at 9:09 AM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

My parents were white southerners (well, except for my father's Cherokee grandmother) and we had watermelon whenever it was available as I was growing up in Colorado.

I remember eating half of a watermelon by myself that was a few inches beyond a foot long on a number of occasions, and my main impression was that it was not very substantial as food. I don’t know the calorie count of watermelons, but if my halves of watermelons had as many calories as a 16 oz can of pop I’d be surprised — and it took forever to eat because of all of those damn seeds.

I tried to cut the slices as thin as possible so I could brush the seeds off instead of spitting them out, but it was kind of hopeless, plus it did nothing to diminish the multitude of thin white ghost seeds that in retrospect must have been unfertilized. I did not know about its specific association with black people until third grade at the earliest.

Underwhelmed as I was by watermelon as a snack or dessert, I thought watermelon flavored Jolly Rancher candies were the most desirable by far, and the tastiest pickles I have ever had were pickled watermelon rind. There is something about the texture and flavor of that rind when presented as a pickle that is beyond anything.
posted by jamjam at 1:55 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

“In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I will tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.”
posted by rubatan at 3:05 PM on December 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Stephen Foster and Steve Reich provide music for this 1965 send up by the San Francisco mime troup.
Watermelon.
posted by hortense at 6:30 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

This has got me wondering how many of these historical connections Herbie Hancock was thinking about with Watermelon Man.
posted by clawsoon at 9:11 AM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]