Please Don’t Cook Those Sweet Potatoes: Race, Labor, Food, and Subterfuge in Mercer Mayer’s Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp

This article examines Mercer Mayer’s Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp (1976), a picture book that combines elements of the “Little Red Riding Hood” tale and the Brer Rabbit stories. I argue that Liza Lou, the preteen African American protagonist, uses subsistence food, as well as food simulacra, to offload her work on her adversaries; as a result she symbolically challenges the subjugation associated with labor that African Americans performed during and after the era of slavery. I conclude that Mayer’s book anticipates the culturally diverse Little Red Riding Hood characters who have increasingly occupied contemporary fairy tale picture books.