Writing in the Kitchen

"This collection of scholarly essays examines southern food as a unique cultural phenomenon, specifically examining its relation to literature. Recent analyses of the South's food have tended to emphasize the profligacy of the region's cooking at the end of the twentieth century (e.g., Paula Deen), but the genesis of southern cooking lies more in a focus on imaginatively using scraps or less-desirable parts of an animal to fill impoverished tables. One essay describes Thomas Jefferson defending contour plowing to preserve topsoil from erosion. Another examines the interplay of Native Americans, European colonials, and African slaves on foodways. Particularly compelling are analyses of how different, yet complementary, literary representations of white cooks (intellectual, analytic) and black cooks (instinctual, emotive) mirror the South's slave heritage. One contributor links vendor's outcries in New Orleans's markets to poetry."

--Mark Knoblauch, Booklist