In this Book
- Cornbread Nation 7: The Best of Southern Food Writing
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: University of Georgia Press
How does Southern food look from the outside? The form is caught in constantly dueling stereotypes: It’s so often imagined as either the touchingly down-home feast or the heartstopping health scourge of a nation. But as any Southern transplant will tell you once they’ve spent time in the region, Southerners share their lives in food, with a complex mix of stories of belonging and not belonging and of traditions that form identities of many kinds.
Cornbread Nation 7, edited by Francis Lam, brings together the best Southern food writing from recent years, including well-known food writers such as Sara Roahen and Brett Anderson, a couple of classic writers such as Langston Hughes, and some newcomers. The collection, divided into five sections (“Come In and Stay Awhile,” “Provisions and Providers,” “Five Ways of Looking at Southern Food,” “The South, Stepping Out,” and “Southerners Going Home”), tells the stories both of Southerners as they move through the world and of those who ended up in the South. It explores from where and from whom food comes, and it looks at what food means to culture and how it relates to home.
Table of Contents
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-iv
- Introduction
- pp. 1-4
- Come In and Stay Awhile
- We Waited as Long as We Could
- pp. 7-12
- The Homesick Restaurant
- pp. 13-23
- Stuffed, Smothered, Z’herbes
- pp. 24-29
- What I Cook Is Who I Am
- pp. 30-34
- God Has Assholes for Children
- pp. 35-39
- Around the World in Eight Shops
- pp. 42-45
- That’s Your Country
- pp. 46-48
- Friends and Families
- pp. 49-54
- The Perfect Chef
- pp. 55-68
- Provisions and Providers
- Nature’s Spoils
- pp. 71-89
- I Had a Farm in Atlanta
- pp. 90-95
- The Price of Tomatoes
- pp. 96-100
- Working in the Shadows
- pp. 101-107
- The Celebrity Shepherd
- pp. 108-113
- The Triumph of Jamie Oliver’s “Nemesis”
- pp. 114-116
- Grabbing Dinner
- pp. 117-122
- A Taste for the Hunt
- pp. 131-133
- Eat Dessert First
- pp. 134-138
- Anyone and Everyone Is Welcome
- pp. 139-142
- Five Ways of Looking at Southern Food
- The Great Leveler
- pp. 145-148
- The Post- Husk Era
- pp. 149-153
- Ode to Gumbo
- pp. 154-157
- The South, Stepping Out
- When the Queso Dripped Like Honey
- pp. 179-182
- Willie Mae Seaton Takes New York
- pp. 183-189
- Mississippi Chinese Lady Goes Home to Korea
- pp. 190-200
- An Oyster Named Dan
- pp. 201-207
- Coconut: The Queen of Cakes
- pp. 208-213
- The Vicksburg Lebanese Supper
- pp. 214-216
- We Shall Not Be Moved
- pp. 221-224
- Fixing on the Next Star
- p. 225
- Southerners Going Home
- I Placed a Jar in Tennessee
- pp. 231-236
- Pasquale’s Hot Tamales
- pp. 254-256
- cutting greens
- p. 257
- Remembering Pitmaster Ricky Parker
- pp. 258-259
- Contributors
- pp. 263-266
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 267-270
- The Southern Foodways Alliance
- pp. 271-273