Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways

by David A. Davis (Editor), Tara Powell (Editor), Jessica B. Harris (Foreword)

Scarlett O'Hara munched on a radish and vowed never to go hungry again. Vardaman Bundren ate bananas in Faulkner's Jefferson, and the Invisible Man dined on a sweet potato in Harlem. Although food and stories may be two of the most prominent cultural products associated with the South, the connections between them have not been thoroughly explored until now. Southern food has become the subject of increasingly self-conscious intellectual consideration. The Southern Foodways Alliance, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, food-themed issues of Oxford American and Southern Cultures , and a spate of new scholarly and popular books demonstrate this interest. Writing in the Kitchen explores the relationship between food and literature and makes a major contribution to the study of both southern literature and of southern foodways and culture more widely. This collection examines food writing in a range of literary expressions, including cookbooks, agricultural journals, novels, stories, and poems. Contributors interpret how authors use food to explore the changing South, considering the ways race, ethnicity, class, gender, and region affect how and what people eat. They describe foods from specific southern places such as New Orleans and Appalachia, engage both the historical and contemporary South, and study the food traditions of ethnicities as they manifest through the written word.

Genres: Essays

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2014

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Check out this review, and others like it, at my book blog, Bookmarks and Coffee Mugs


I have a confession to make: I have been absolutely dreadful lately about keeping up with my Netgalley account. I have several books that I need to read, but I've put them aside for library books, or books I've won on Goodreads, and The Office reruns on Netflix. So, my apologies to my Netgalley account.

To remedy that, I stayed up very late last night to make headway into a book called "Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways." I know that sounds dreadfully boring, and yes, some of it was, but I actually did learn quite a bit from what I read.

"Foodways" is not really a word I've ever used, or heard, or read, so I had to look it up. It's basically a term used to describe an intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history. It's why we eat what we eat, and what it means (thank you to Google for that great definition). This term is used concerning Southern food in that Southern food is comprised of Native American, European and African cooking practices, vegetables, and flavors. Southern food is something I'm extremely familiar with, even though Texas is not technically Southern, but these essays put them in a new light for me. It talks about food as a racial and class symbol, as a commodity, as a luxury, as a metaphor, and more.

Plus,the descriptions of Southern dishes set me off for a humongous craving for homemade fried chicken, mashed potatoes and cornbread (with generous helpings of gravy). Yum.

As this is a compilation of essays, the topics are extremely varied, from Thomas Jefferson and the necessity of reading in the Agrarian South to Eating Poetry in New Orleans to Reading Food and Class in Appalachian Literature. Though I didn't recognize many of the books (which was very humbling), I was glad that Gone with the Wind and The Help were. Now I have more books to add to my reading list!

Here are some of parts of the book that caught my eye:

"The prevailing trend in American popular culture, extending from nineteenth-century accounts of plantation groaning tables overloaded with regional delicacies to Paula Deen's much mocked obsession with butter, has been to associate southern food with abundance and extravagance, but the reality of southern food is that it is based more on ingenuity born of privation and necessity."

"Food is a text upon which the history and values of the southern people are written."

"Bremer described a scene of "pickle persecution." A guest is offered and declines pickles. Another guest observes her neighbor's plate is pickle-less. Pickles are offered again, and once more refused. Just when the guest is "waiting for some reply interesting to you," a servant appears "and with horror you behold pickles ready to be put upon your plate...""



If you're interested in food, or Southern literature, or just think this would be interesting, i would totally recommend this to you. You can skip the essays you're not interested in, or just read bits and pieces here and there, and it would still be enjoyable.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a dry book! So unfortunate because it’s an interesting premise!

[Alysa H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important collection for anyone interested in the intersection of race, class, and gender in Southern foodways. Some of the essays are more engagingly-written than others, and nearly all of them concern race -- which is arguably as it should be, considering the rather fraught subject matter.

This book wasn't quite what I expected, as it deals as much with representations of food and foodways in non-fiction (e.g. historical travel diaries) as much as in fiction and cookbooks, but I'm grateful to have had an opportunity to read it. I learned quite a lot.



I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley.