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Reviewed by:
  • Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket
  • Lucy M. Long
Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket. By Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2009. 227 pp. Softbound, $21.95.

Food and oral history go together like peas in a pod. Everyone eats, and although not everyone cooks, just about everyone likes to talk about food. Republic of [End Page 120] Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket channels that impulse into an oral history of barbecue in central Texas. "Oral histories" is actually a more accurate description of this project. The book editor, Elizabeth Engelhardt, associate professor of American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin, directed eleven graduate students in collecting oral histories, editing them, and writing commentaries contextualizing those histories and placing barbecue within larger frameworks. (Photographs and short essays at the end of the book identify the researchers.) Methodological processes are also summarized at the end of the book. The result is an insightful as well as entertaining window into barbecue and the culture surrounding it in one region.

The book is not a typical collection of oral history interviews. Interviews were selected, edited, and rewritten in a journalistic first-person style. These are juxtaposed with essays commenting on and contextualizing the oral histories. Some of the essays overlap with the oral histories, offering autobiographical accounts of growing up in the region or living within the barbecue culture, and reflective musings on identity or personal responses to that culture. The book also scatters tidbits of information throughout—maps, diversions into barbecue equipment, barbecue's connection to sports, Big Red (the drink associated with barbecue in central Texas), and barbecue in films. Photographs of individuals accompany the oral histories, while photographs of the buildings and places in which barbecue is prepared, served, and consumed give a feel for the culture of the region. Barbecue itself is also featured, of course—verbal descriptions cannot convey the aesthetic experience of the abundance, messiness, and sheer physicality of eating barbecue.

All of this may initially give the impression of the book being a hodgepodge of whatever the students were able to find. However, the layout and presentation reflect a solid grounding in ethnographic theory as well as an intentional playing with standard formats—and readers' expectations. The presentation also allows the book to function in multiple ways: as a colorful "coffee table" publication, a reader on a regional food culture, an introduction to cultural theory, and an oral history of how individuals experience barbecue. The one thing the book does not offer that many might expect is recipes. It describes processes instead, but it would be helpful to know the reason behind this, particularly since collecting recipes is oftentimes a way to begin an oral history of food.

The Introduction lays out the basic philosophy and intent of the book. Englehardt uses the potluck as a metaphor for the project and the book. In general parlance, a potluck meal leaves the contents of a meal up to luck. People bring to the table whatever they have on hand, are in the mood for, or have the time and skill to make. Applying this concept to an oral history project is not as haphazard as [End Page 121] that sounds. In this case, it translates into an ethnography of what people in a geographic area call barbecue and the meanings and memories that they attach to it. The project encompassed a two-hour drive radius surrounding Austin and included anyone who referred to what they did as barbecue. Rather than force people into preconceived categories of what is real barbecue or what is real tradition, the book allows for multiple usages. This is particularly important with something like barbecue that can be understood as a type of food, a cooking technique, an event, and even a cultural ethos and aesthetic, but it also is the heart of ethnography and oral history.

The book contains six sections framed by introductory and concluding materials. It begins with a foreword by John T Edge, of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization that has combined the academic study of food with professional food writing and cooking, culinary tourism, and a...

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