Love, Loss, and the "Art" of Making Gumbo: An Interview with Eileen Julien

This interview was conducted by phone on Wednesday, May 3, 2006.

JACKSON: Where did you grow up?

JULIEN: In New Orleans.

JACKSON: New Orleans. And what was that like?

JULIEN: Well, it was just where I grew up. It's not really until you leave home that you understand the distinction of the place that you've lived and just take for granted. It was very family, a place where relations were important and Sundays were days to go visiting, seeing people, relatives and so. It was very family oriented, very Catholic.

JACKSON: Very Catholic.

JULIEN: Yeah, I think even for people who were not Catholic it was nonetheless quite Catholic, even in the way the city functions and so forth. Of course, when I grew up it was mostly segregated too.

JACKSON: When did you leave New Orleans?

JULIEN: 1969.

JACKSON: How important was food either in its abundance or lack in your world as a child?

JULIEN: It was very important. My mother was a school teacher, my father was a postman. We didn't lack for anything that we really needed. And neither did my relatives. Many men were postmen, at least in our context, and there were some teachers, my mother's friends and her sister, my dad's sister. We were, if you will, middle class, but not the wealthy middle class of doctors and lawyers, just a kind of small bourgeoisie, you know. And food was important. In fact, your question reminds me of a couple of things, [laughter] a bit of family lore. My grandmother used to say, for example, when you were going to eat at someone's home, she would say, "Well, you should always eat a little something before you go." For her, you never knew for sure that there would indeed be food. That was my grandmother's take, that you should eat because you just couldn't be sure what people would actually be giving you. You just didn't know what things could happen. My mother's attitude was one of surprise because going out to eat at other people's homes was not thought of as being "invited out to dinner." It wasn't thought of in that way. She once said to me, this was when I was in graduate school at Wisconsin and I told her I'd been invited out to dinner, "Well, do they know how to cook?!" She was very concerned that maybe they wouldn't really know how to fix good-tasting food you would want to eat. New Orleanians can be finicky about eating other types of cuisine. And now, you know, something's happened in the nation around food that's sort of different from when I grew up.

JACKSON: What do you mean?

JULIEN: Well, certainly in the fifties, and even the sixties, people didn't go to restaurants like they do now. A big pastime for professional people and wealthy people these days is to go out to dinner and to be invited to other homes for dinner. We ate at other people's homes a lot, but it wasn't like being invited out to dinner. It was just sort of normal. It was just an extension of your family. So, it wasn't "going out to dinner." In New Orleans, there were two main black restaurants when I was growing up. In fact, for a long time there was just one that I can remember. It was only later, in the sixties that there was a second one that became pretty well known. Dooky Chase was the one that had been there from when I was very small. And, I think, it was the one that people knew of and went to. There were other neighborhood spots, the Baquet's, but, mainly, people didn't really go out in the way we do now.²

JACKSON: Do you remember eating gumbo as a child?

JULIEN: Oh! Of course! [laughter] Absolutely! Sure.

JACKSON: Who made it primarily? Did you eat...