The fifth volume in this popular series from the Southern Foodways Alliance spans the food cultures of the South. Cornbread Nation 5, lovingly edited by accomplished food writer Fred W. Sauceman, celebrates food and the ways in which it forges unexpected relationships between people and places. In this collection of more than seventy essays and poems, we read about the food that provides nourishment as well as a sense of community and shared history.
Essays examine Nashville’s obsession with hot chicken and the South’s passion for congealed foods. There are stories of green tomatoes frying over a campfire in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee and tea cakes baking for Easter in Louisiana. In a chapter on immigrant cooking, writers visit the Mississippi Delta where a Chinese family fries pork rinds in a wok and a Lebanese restaurant serves baklava alongside coconut cream pie. Alan Deutschman, a self-described “Jewish Yankee,” chronicles his search for the perfect country ham. Barbara Kingsolver extols on the joys of eating sustainably. Sara Roahen writes a veritable love letter to the venerable New Orleans Sazerac. Kevin Young delights with his “Ode to Chicken,” and Donna Tartt treats us to what else but bourbon. Cornbread Nation 5 is a feast for the eyes, and if you’re not hungry or thirsty when you pick up this book, you will be when you put it down.
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.
FRED W. SAUCEMAN is an associate professor of Appalachian studies at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of four books including the three-volume series
The Place Setting, which explores Appalachian foodways. He directed and produced the documentary
A Red Hot Dog Digest. Sauceman’s
Food with Fred appears monthly on WJHL-TV, the CBS affiliate in Johnson City, Tennessee.
MARILYN KALLETT has published sixteen books, including six volumes of poetry, translations, critical essays, children’s books, pedagogy, and anthologies of women’s literature. She is a professor emerita of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
JOHN SHELTON REED is founding coeditor of the journal
Southern Cultures. He is the Mark W. Clark Visiting Professor History at the Citadel, and William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is coauthor, with Dale Volberg Reed, of
1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South.
RHETA GRIMSLEY JOHNSON covered the South for over three decades as a newspaper reporter and columnist, winning several national awards for her reporting, including the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award, the Headliner Award, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, Johnson is a member of the Scripps Howard Newspapers Editorial Hall of Fame and the author of several books, including Poor Man’s Provence; Hank Hung the Moon and Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts; and more. A native of Colquitt, Georgia, she grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, and has lived and worked in the South all her career.
ROY BLOUNT JR.'s works include the memoir
Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story, the novel
First Hubby, the screenplay for
Larger than Life, the edited anthology
Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor, and such collections as
Now, Where Were We? and
Not Exactly What I Had in Mind. He is a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and a columnist for the
Oxford American. He lives in New York City and western Massachusetts.
