Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America

by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt

In this innovative and insightful book, Elizabeth Engelhardt argues that modern American food, business, caretaking, politics, sex, travel, writing, and restaurants all owe a debt to boardinghouse women in the South. From the eighteenth century well into the twentieth, entrepreneurial women ran boardinghouses throughout the South; some also carried the institution to far-flung places like California, New York, and London. Owned and operated by Black, Jewish, Native American, and white women, rich and poor, immigrant and native-born, these lodgings were often hubs of business innovation and engines of financial independence for their owners. Within their walls, boardinghouse residents and owners developed the region's earliest printed cookbooks, created space for making music and writing literary works, formed ad hoc communities of support, tested boundaries of race and sexuality, and more.

Engelhardt draws on a vast archive to recover boardinghouse women's stories, revealing what happened in the kitchens, bedrooms, hallways, back stairs, and front porches as well as behind closed doors—legacies still with us today.

Genres: History

312 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2023

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought Boardinghouse Women after attending a lecture by its author, Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, at the Library of Virginia. Engelhardt, Kenan Eminent Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a lively and engaging presenter of this unique and little-studied aspect of American culture—the southern boardinghouse, an institution that took various forms but was most often run by women, typically widows. She uses this common thread to examine the lives of some of the women who ran them and other family members affected. The result is a deeply researched, thoughtful, and mostly entertaining look at how boardinghouse culture permeated and influenced American life—through offering entrepreneurial opportunity for women at a time when they had few rights, by inventing the concept of “southern” cooking, and by sometimes offering both freedom and constraint to women, depending on the circumstances.

Engelhardt is careful to address issues of class, race, and gender in her study, but the reality of the source material available is that most of the stories are about white women. She finds a few exceptions, but often has to stretch the boardinghouse concept a bit to include them. Nevertheless, this book will be of interest to anyone who is interested in learning about how boardinghouses functioned as an integral part of society at a time of accelerating transition, growth, and movement. There is perhaps a bit more detail than a casual reader absolutely wants, but there is no doubt that this is an impressive and enlightening book that even suggests ways boardinghouse culture has evolved into the modern era.

[MaryAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book may well deserve more than 3 stars, but it was more than I could read at the time. The author has obviously done her research, but I was looking for more anecdotal stories than a scholarly work. Maybe later!