The world of print media has been ever evolving since its inception in the fifteenth century. Woodblock printing gave way to the Gutenberg press, which gave way to the Rotary press, which gave way to the internet. In just the last few decades, online media has catalyzed the largest change in the discourse of public literacy since the very invention of mass printing. Globalization has given us the ability to share ideas with one another at lightspeed; do art or literature or business in seamless collaboration; and to form meaningful relationships with people we’ve never even met face-to-face.

In all of these interactions, there is language—there is writing. How we communicate with each other is fundamentally altered by the technology available to us at a certain time in history. Our relationship to language, is in part, our relationship to our devices. But, as the tech industry rolls out each yearly update, and each new generation of mechanisms, it becomes harder to keep up with the constant onslaught of technological evolution.

That is precisely why we need people like Dr. Colleen Reilly. Since the beginning of her academic career, she has been examining this strange relationship between man, machine, and language. She has been thinking about how we can best utilize these writing tools that are available to us, and how to better implement them into our classrooms, routines, and lives. She has wondered, how are these tools that we’re utilizing shaping us, and how are we shaping them?

When a book comes out—if it’s successful—a couple of things can happen. That book can make it on lists, like the New York Times Best-Sellers, or Goodreads Listopia. It can win awards like the Booker, the Hugo, or the Pulitzer. Or it can be translated into other languages—reprinted for audiences all over the world. There are some famous examples of this. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, was originally published in Portuguese. Tolstoy’s Anna Kerinina, was of course, authored in Russian.

But this opens up a whole new room for debate, and not just in regard to authorship. This act of translation—it's never perfect. It can’t be. That’s just not how language works. Sometimes, aspects of the original text don't work in a new language, sometimes things just fall flat. Other times, a translator might take creative liberties, embellish things or make minor changes out of preference. In all of this, there is change. There is a disconnect between pieces. A translation is never a true, meticulous, word by word reprint of the original.

Jessica Shafer is a Junior here at the UNCW, and she has been ruminating on this quandary. Her paper, “The Languages of Caramelo and Puro Cuento,” examines Sandra Cisneros' bilingual epic and its Spanish-language translation. In it, she ponders: What is lost when a novel is translated? What is potentially gained? How is a text even further complicated by the inclusion of multilingual hybrids, like Spanglish or Ingspañol? And, what effect does this code-switching have in Cisnero’s writing?

Food. Food is so many things. It is nourishment, sustenance, it fuels our bodies as we work, live, and play. It’s something that motivates us, a symbol of survival. But it is also so much more. Food is capable of satisfying not just our biological needs, but our spiritual ones too. Food brings people together, through both process and product. It’s the thing that gathers families around the table in celebration, and in memorial. It’s the centerpiece of romance, the fertilizer for budding relationships. And it’s what you bring to a friend, when they have experienced a tragedy. Food is the glue of society.

But it’s also a weapon.

The denial of food is an unmistakable act of aggression, and it is the base structure for societal inequity. Starvation is a completely preventable disease in America, but yet it persists as a threat to more than 44 million people. To face hunger isn’t merely a product of circumstance. To go hungry is to be abandoned by your community.

In the South, food has an especially complicated relationship to politics. In the land of plantations, Jim Crow, and indigenous removal, the American South has seen more than its fair share of foodway disruption. The massive influx of African influence brought in through the transatlantic slave trade, the tactless appropriation of indigenous crops and traditions, bound beneath the overeaching umbrella of European methods and mentalities, has made the history of Southern food a richly seasoned gumbo of unexpected flavors and ingredients. It makes for a heavy dish, served on a platter forged from racism, and with a side salad of civil disobedience.

Rachel Merritt Jones has made a picnic of her scholarly endeavors this semester, diving headfirst—or rather mouth-first—into the rich history of African Diasporic foodways and traditions in the American South. She is a graduate student here at UNCW, and has dedicated much of her research to studying the relationship between food and African American history. Recently, she embarked on an academic survey of Natchez Mississippi, to explore the oral and culinary traditions of her home-town community there. Today, Rachel is here to talk about that experience, and to share what she learned—and tasted—while immersed in her delicious pursuits.