Cornbread Nation 6: The Best of Southern Food Writing (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing)
The hungrily awaited sixth volume in the Cornbread Nation series tells the story of the American South—circa now—through the prism of its food and the people who grow, make, serve, and eat it. The modern South serves up a groaning board of international cuisines virtually unknown to previous generations of Southerners, notes Brett Anderson in his introduction. Southern food, like the increasingly globalized South, shows an open and cosmopolitan attitude toward ethnic diversity. But fully appreciating Southern food still requires fluency with the region’s history, warts and all. The essays, memoirs, poetry, and profiles in this book are informed by that fluency, revealing topics and people traditional as well as avant garde, down home as well as urbane.
The book is organized into six chapters: “Menu Items” shares ruminations on iconic dishes; “Messing with Mother Nature” looks at the relationship between food and the natural environment; “Southern Characters” profiles an eclectic mix of food notables; “Southern Drinkways” distills libations, hard and soft; “Identity in Motion” examines change in the Southern food world; and “The Global South” leaves readers with some final thoughts on the cross-cultural influences wafting from the Southern kitchen. Gathered here are enough prominent food writers to muster the liveliest of dinner parties: Molly O’Neill, Calvin Trillin, Michael Pollan, Kim Severson, Martha Foose, Jessica Harris, Bill Addison, Matt and Ted Lee, and Lolis Eric Elie, among others. Two classic pieces—Frederick Douglass’s account of the sustenance of slaves and Edward Behr’s 1995 profile of Cajun cook Eula Mae Doré—are included. A photo essay on the Collins Oyster Company family of Louisiana rounds out Cornbread Nation 6.
Published in association with the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. A Friends Fund Publication.
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Reviews for Cornbread Nation 6: The Best of Southern Food Writing (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing)
David Chang
chef/owner of Momofuku
A veritable feast of good writing and original thinking . . . Like the well-made meal, it’s carefully sequenced to document tradition as well as innovation, history as well as the surprisingly new.
Tom Rankin
Director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
Southern food has become high profile, but there is not a better book than Cornbread Nation 6 to understand its appeal. From family tables to city restaurants, from Cajuns to Texans to Geechee girls, from slave food to contemporary ethnic offerings, this book offers engaging and informed stories of the diversity of southern foodways. A book that gives food voices from Frederick Douglass to Wendell Berry (by way of Michael Pollan) should be consumed with gusto. Pour a beverage, whether bourbon or Cheerwine, and sit down with this book on the porch. The light will shine.
Charles Reagan Wilson
Cook Chair of History and Southern Studies, University of Mississippi
Not all for the serious, scholarly or scientific . . . Cornbread Nation 6 also brings humor and humanity to what could ultimately be the best on-going collection of food writing in America today.
Edible Memphis Southern cuisine is a moving target unwilling to lie still for even the discriminating palates of Southern food writers. But thankfully, those folks are still out there, cheering, challenging and chewing on everything that Southern food has come to represent. Their stories come together in Cornbread Nation 6. . . . [I]t gives a revealing and insightful look at [Southern cuisine's] evolution.
Nedra Rhone
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I've hardly put the volume down.
Andre Gallant
Athens Banner-Herald
Reading is a pleasure that most of us wish we could do more often, if only time and energy would allow it. Reading about food is an even more exquisite treat for some; if the focus happens to be Southern food, well, that's simply icing on the cake. Luckily, for those who appreciate all that the world of Southern food entails, there's Cornbread Nation. . . . [Brett Anderson] has created a compilation that will literally make the reader salivate.
Roni K. Devlin
Shelf Awareness