Writing in the Kitchen

READINGS OF FOOD IN SOUTHERN LITERATURE THAT REVEAL HUNGER AND CREATIVITY AND THAT GO BEYOND DEEP-FRIED CLICHÉSScarlett O'Hara munched on a radish and vowed never to go hungry again. Vardaman Bundren ate bananas in Faulkner's Jefferson and the Invisible Man dined on a sweet potato in Harlem. Although food and stories may be two of the most prominent cultural products associated with the South the connections between them have not been thoroughly explored until now.Southern food has become the subject of increasingly self-conscious intellectual consideration. The Southern Foodways Alliance the Southern Food and Beverage Museum food-themed issues of Oxford American and Southern Cultures and a spate of new scholarly and popular books demonstrate this interest. Writing in the Kitchen explores the relationship between food and literature and makes a major contribution to the study of both southern literature and of southern foodways and culture more widely.This collection examines food writing in a range of literary expressions including cookbooks agricultural journals novels stories and poems. Contributors interpret how authors use food to explore the changing South considering the ways race ethnicity class gender and region affect how and what people eat. They describe foods from specific southern places such as New Orleans and Appalachia engage both the historical and contemporary South and study the food traditions of ethnicities as they manifest through the written word.Contributions by David A. Davis Elizabeth Engelhardt Marcie Cohen Ferris Lisa Hinrichsen Erica Abrams Locklear Tara Powell Ann Romines Ruth Salvaggio David S. Shields Melanie Benson Taylor Sarah W. Walden Psyche Williams-ForsonDAVID A. DAVIS Macon Georgia is assistant professor of English and southern studies at Mercer University. TARA POWELL Columbia South Carolina is associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina.