BOSOM BISCUITS A Study of African American Intergenerational Communication

Abstract

Grandma Mattie Flippin did domestic work for a White Virginia family. Her primary duties were cooking, cleaning, and whatever else she was told to do. Her husband died, leaving her alone to raise her extended family. Mattie Flippin spent more time at the White family's home than she spent at her own, but what time that she did spend at home was "quality time." Not having sufficient food for her family, Grandma Mattie Flippin used well the resources available to her. Before leaving the White family's home, she often stuffed her extraordinarily endowed bosom with fresh biscuits which she had made that morning. These biscuits remained body temperature warm, and, as reported to the authors by her grandchild, Ms. Martha Carter (May 14, 1991), the butter had melted and turned the biscuits' white insides a beautiful golden color. Sometimes, these warm, buttered, bosom biscuits were all the family had to eat.

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