The Story of Alabama in Fourteen Foods by Emily Blejwas (review)

Folks who choose the American South as a place to work, live, raise families, and of course, cook and eat can be thought of as "active Southerners," as postulated a few years back by John T. Edge, founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. He'd expand this theory a bit later in a 2017 column in the Oxford American, "An Active Authenticity," in which he wrote, "Active Southerners are reinventing the region. In the process, as an already complicated region embraces new people, and cultural nuances accrete, much is gained. Especially for eaters."

Good eaters and engaged readers interested in exploring the notion of "active Southerners" need look no further than The Story of Alabama in Fourteen Foods by Emily Blejwas. There they'll find a cadre of cooks spread across multiple generations who, through their creativity and expertise, have both informed and transformed the way Alabamians eat. Let's peek at two examples.

According to Blejwas, it's possible that pioneers taming the Tennessee Valley region of the state stirred up the first kettles of chicken stew. And, while the dish might mystify anyone living beyond the counties that hug the Alabama-Tennessee border, it is "deeply sown into the local culture and a major element of the region's social life and identity" (57). Think Lenten fish fries in Acadiana. Conjure up goat roasts in the Mississippi Hill Country. After all, chicken stew does best what all foods of privation do---stretch a costly (or time consuming) ingredient to the point where it becomes a community gathering spot. To the modern cook, the recipe for a chicken stew reads easy---most of what's in the stew is likely already in the pantry or the freezer. But with dishes like these, what's in them isn't really the point. What matters is who stirs the pot, who keeps watch over the fire, and most importantly, who comes to eat.

And, just as chicken stew anchors the northern edge of the state, gumbo lays claim to the southern edge. Blejwas' chapter on gumbo pays homage to the Africans and Creoles who shaped the foodways of Alabama's Gulf Coast. "The stamp of African tradition on southern cooking is hard to understate," Ms. Blejwas says in her chapter about gumbo (32). I would offer that it is impossible to overstate. Later in the same chapter Blejwas notes, "No dish better showcases the African backbone and cultural blend of southern cooking than gumbo, a seafood stew that unites ingredients across continents" (33). Indeed. Today, gumbo, often served over a scoop of potato salad, is the dish that calls Gulf Coast Alabamians home.

If Blejwas told the complex and nuanced story of these two dishes (and twelve others) and threw in a couple of recipes, we'd call this a cookbook (and a good one). Instead, she's used each dish as a lens through which we are invited to view Alabama itself. Each chapter's dish is the entry point to an amalgamation of history, cultural geography, sociology, and southern foodways. No corner of the state is left unexplored. In her chapters on banana pudding and Lane cake, the economic engine of the banana docks of late nineteenth-century Mobile stand next to the segregated women's clubs of the Progressive Era. Chapters on boiled peanuts and sweet potato pie allow Blejwas to dig deep into the complex racial history of the state---from enslavement to emancipation to the Civil Rights Era. Along the way, she even finds some room to stake an Alabama claim to pan-southern dishes like fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, and sweet tea.

Back to Edge's thesis, most of these dishes (or the idea of them) came to Alabama with the people who laid claim this place. The Poarch Creeks offer a more complex narrative, but even they had to actively reclaim all they...