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Cornbread Nation 6: The Best of Southern Food Writing
The hungrily awaited sixth volume in the Cornbread Nation series tells the story of the American South—circa now—through the prism of its food and the people who grow, make, serve, and eat it. The modern South serves up a groaning board of international cuisines virtually unknown to previous generations of Southerners, notes Brett Anderson in his introduction. Southern food, like the increasingly globalized South, shows an open and cosmopolitan attitude toward ethnic diversity. But fully appreciating Southern food still requires fluency with the region’s history, warts and all. The essays, memoirs, poetry, and profiles in this book are informed by that fluency, revealing topics and people traditional as well as avant garde, down home as well as urbane.
The book is organized into six chapters: “Menu Items” shares ruminations on iconic dishes; “Messing with Mother Nature” looks at the relationship between food and the natural environment; “Southern Characters” profiles an eclectic mix of food notables; “Southern Drinkways” distills libations, hard and soft; “Identity in Motion” examines change in the Southern food world; and “The Global South” leaves readers with some final thoughts on the cross-cultural influences wafting from the Southern kitchen. Gathered here are enough prominent food writers to muster the liveliest of dinner parties: Molly O’Neill, Calvin Trillin, Michael Pollan, Kim Severson, Martha Foose, Jessica Harris, Bill Addison, Matt and Ted Lee, and Lolis Eric Elie, among others. Two classic pieces—Frederick Douglass’s account of the sustenance of slaves and Edward Behr’s 1995 profile of Cajun cook Eula Mae Doré—are included. A photo essay on the Collins Oyster Company family of Louisiana rounds out Cornbread Nation 6.
Published in association with the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. A Friends Fund Publication.
The book is organized into six chapters: “Menu Items” shares ruminations on iconic dishes; “Messing with Mother Nature” looks at the relationship between food and the natural environment; “Southern Characters” profiles an eclectic mix of food notables; “Southern Drinkways” distills libations, hard and soft; “Identity in Motion” examines change in the Southern food world; and “The Global South” leaves readers with some final thoughts on the cross-cultural influences wafting from the Southern kitchen. Gathered here are enough prominent food writers to muster the liveliest of dinner parties: Molly O’Neill, Calvin Trillin, Michael Pollan, Kim Severson, Martha Foose, Jessica Harris, Bill Addison, Matt and Ted Lee, and Lolis Eric Elie, among others. Two classic pieces—Frederick Douglass’s account of the sustenance of slaves and Edward Behr’s 1995 profile of Cajun cook Eula Mae Doré—are included. A photo essay on the Collins Oyster Company family of Louisiana rounds out Cornbread Nation 6.
Published in association with the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. A Friends Fund Publication.
- GenresFoodFood History
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 20, 2020
Always a delightful and insightful anthology of essays and poems from the SFA (Southern Foodways Alliance) as part of the University of Mississippi'Studies on Southern Culture, this edition of Cornbread Nation does not disappoint. Not only does it describe delicious food, but also the multicultural and multiethnic forces that combine to create southern food and southern culture. It presents both past and present (or from the date of publication) the defining factors of southern food, from the reprinting of Frederick Douglass's painful essay "Blood-bought Luxuries" detailing the toil and deprivation of the slaves constant forced work to provide crops for his captors table and profit and efforts at a minimal sustenance for survival while providing the labor that profited his captor. As also written in the expert from Jessica B. Harris, "In Sorrows Kitchen" we see the prominent role southern Blacks played in the southern food culture from the depravity of the slave but also persisting long past Jim Crow into today's food culture. The anthology highlights the emerging influences on southern food from (not-so-new) presence of Tex-Mex in Alison Cook's "Why Chile con Queso Matters, to the essay on the fairly new existence of Viet-Cajun food in California as described by Andrea Nguyen. We also hear of the defining efforts of the farm-to-table movement and the eat local movement by chef Sean Brock. In addition to the many cultural forces at play in the southern food movement, this edition of Cornbread Nation clearly emphasizes the impact of man-made destruction on Southern food and culture such as climate change, overfishing, and clearly in the devastation of the BP oil spill on the gulf coast. The six essays in the book's "Messing with Mother Nature" section are both poignant and distressing. All in all, its an informative and enjoyable read for people who love food.
February 11, 2017
This anthology, which features the best of Southern food writing, is the only place you're likely to read about a racially controversial Youtube video featuring a chicken-frying black drag queen, an underground North Carolina secret society dedicated to cooking and eating an outlawed fish, the real origin of collard greens, and the sleazy world of competitive barbecue all in the same place.
This year's editor, Brett Anderson, has done a good job of compiling the expected (hip new chefs devoted to reviving passing foodways, the Gulf Coast's seafood economy's slow recovery from the BP oil spill) and the unexpected (the aforementioned drag queen, a moving ode to mass-produced queso dip as superior to more artisanal varieties). All in all, most of the articles and essays here are pretty fascinating and well-done.
This year's editor, Brett Anderson, has done a good job of compiling the expected (hip new chefs devoted to reviving passing foodways, the Gulf Coast's seafood economy's slow recovery from the BP oil spill) and the unexpected (the aforementioned drag queen, a moving ode to mass-produced queso dip as superior to more artisanal varieties). All in all, most of the articles and essays here are pretty fascinating and well-done.
July 15, 2012
The modern southern food writing canon is well represented in the eagerly anticipated sixth installment of the popular Cornbread Nation series, edited by Brett Anderson of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The edition reflects the recent movement in southern food writing towards profiling our immigrant influences from around the globe. And as southern food writing settles into comfortableness with its ancestry and unsteadiness with its progeny it is still capable of lightning rod attraction for disciples and dissidents.
CB6 touches on these and more through keen culling of its previously printed sources. Not all for the serious, scholarly or scientific (though well represented in this volume), CB6 also brings humor and humanity to what could ultimately be the best on-going collection of food writing in America today. We should all be grateful and pass the biscuits please.
EdibleNotes received a complimentary copy of the book from the publisher and received no additional compensation. Copyright 2012 EdibleNotes
CB6 touches on these and more through keen culling of its previously printed sources. Not all for the serious, scholarly or scientific (though well represented in this volume), CB6 also brings humor and humanity to what could ultimately be the best on-going collection of food writing in America today. We should all be grateful and pass the biscuits please.
EdibleNotes received a complimentary copy of the book from the publisher and received no additional compensation. Copyright 2012 EdibleNotes
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews