Randall Kenan Reconciliation

Character isn’t made by machine.

Every bottle of Maker’s Mark® Bourbon is still hand-dipped in our signature red wax. Learn more at makersmark.com.

9065-06 MMADV_6x9_CharacterMachine_AD.indd 1 5/30/18 3:30 PM CALENDAR OF EVENTS

 JANUARY 21, 2019 POP-UP OXFORD SFA FILM FESTIVAL Burns Belfry Museum, Oxford, MS

ISSUE NO. 70 • WINTER 2018

FEBRUARY 9, 2019  WINTER SYMPOSIUM Birmingham, AL

Gravy is a publication of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the 15FEATURES Center for the Study of Southern Culture FIVE WAYS OF at the University of Mississippi. READING FOOD The SFA documents, studies, and explores the diverse food cultures of the changing American South. Our work sets a welcome table where all may consider our history FEBRUARY 21, 2019 VISIBLE YAM 2and Editor’s our future Note in a spirit of respect and Randall Kenan reconciliation. Sara Camp Milam Gravy Podcast Launch 16 BLACK FOOD ON 4JOHN Featured T. EDGE Contributors Editor-in-Chief Your Smartphone 22 WHITE PAGES [email protected] Ravi Howard 6MARY Director’s BETH LASSETER Cut Publisher [email protected] John T. Edge RECIPES FROM A HUNGRY MAN 10SARA Supper CAMP Sanctuary MILAM Editor in the South 32 [email protected] Monique Truong Gustavo Arellano DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS Visuals Editor JUNE 1415, 2019  READ BETWEEN [email protected] Behind the Music SUMMER FIELD TRIP 40 THE LINES As told to Melissa Hall by Paul Burch Bentonville, AR John Kessler RICHIE SWANN Designer [email protected] Meet Jo Ellen O’Hara Annemarie Anderson WE EAT, CARLYNN CROSBY AND OLIVIA TERENZIO 49 THEREFORE Nathalie Dupree Graduate Fellows For more information, visit WE YAM 64and Last Fact Course Checkers southernfoodways.org Laughlin Brandall photo by Ghost of a Dream; Art by installation THIS PAGE: Oriana Koren. by Photograph COVER: Zandria F. Robinson Alisha Sommer EDITOR’S NOTE

planning and preparation needed to pull Oaxaca is a state that off the talks and meals of Symposium has proudly kept its weekend. All hands on deck is a cliché, but it’s one that perfectly describes indigenous traditions SFAWHQ in the months leading up to alive—music, clothing, the the big event. and especially food— Yet the Fall Symposium serves only about 350 guests. That’s barely 15 percent for centuries in the of our membership, and an even smaller face of encroaching fraction of our audience. We asked our- this past october marked my selves: If some of our best work came to modernity. tenth Southern Foodways Fall Sympo- life each year at our flagship Symposium, sium. In 2009, the year SFA explored why weren’t we sharing it with as many connections between food and music, I readers as possible? Insert collective staff arrived as a volunteer with little idea of forehead smack. what to expect. Within hours, I was lis- In this issue, we close out our year of tening—and then joining in—as Alice Reading Food with five features from our WHAT HAPPENS Randall led the audience in “Will the twenty-first Fall Symposium. In 2019, we Circle Be Unbroken.” Later, I helped dig into a vital, yet underexplored truth: AT SYMPOSIUM serve a lunch cooked by David Chang. Food Is Work. Planning is underway for ...shouldn’t stay at Symposium (Afterwards, star-struck, I thanked him. our Winter Symposium in Birmingham, I’m sure he remembers.) Summer Field Trip in Bentonville, and of BY SARA CAMP MILAM I returned as a Fall Symposium volun- course Fall Symposium here in Oxford. If teer in 2010 and 2011. Two thousand you can join us for any (or all!) of our three twelve was my first symposium as a full- 2019 Symposia, we look forward to wel- time member of the SFA staff. That year, coming you. And even if you can’t, you I realized how little I’d understood, even can pull up a seat via the pages of Gravy.

Photos by Brandall Laughlin Brandall Photos by as a volunteer, about the months of Happy New Year, and happy reading.

2 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 3 FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

ORIANA KOREN RAVI HOWARD Oriana Koren is a Los Angeles–based Ravi Howard lives in Tallahassee, where photographer and writer whose work is he teaches creative writing at Florida State anchored in food, culture, and identi- University. To date, he is the only Gravy ty. When not traveling to document contributor who has won both the Ernest stories on location, Oriana works out of J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence a daylight studio in downtown Los and a Sports Emmy. SFA director John T. Angeles’ Fashion District. For this issue Edge developed a crush on Howard’s of Gravy, Oriana drew inspiration from the I Spy children’s book series. “As an artist, writing three years ago and eventually convinced him to speak at the 2018 Fall I love the idea that photographs can be read as riddles to be solved—there’s always Symposium. We hope it’s the ﬁ rst of many Ravi Howard symposium presentations. more information in an image than we realize,” Oriana says.

RANDALL KENAN ZANDRIA F. ROBINSON

Randall Kenan is the author of six books Zandria F. Robinson is a former SFA of fi ction and nonfi ction and the editor, neighbor and colleague—she taught so- most recently, of The Carolina Table: ciology and Southern Studies at the Uni- North Carolina Writers on Food. SFA versity of Mississippi from 2009–2012. managing editor Sara Camp Milam fell She now teaches at Rhodes College in in love with his fi ction when she was in her native Memphis. A scholar of pop graduate school because it reminded her culture, she seamlessly weaves academ- of the Latin American literature she studied as an undergrad. She once wrote a term ic and popular references in her writing. You’ll get a taste in her feature essay, which paper on Kenan’s fi ctional community of Tims Creek, North Carolina. Nearly a is adapted from her remarks as Symposium Coach at the 2018 Fall Symposium. decade later, she would be very embarrassed to show it to him. Robinson is at work on her third book, which is about the Memphis soul sound and the Soulsville, USA community.

JOHN KESSLER MONIQUE TRUONG

John Kessler spent almost two decades Monique Truong ﬁ nished manuscript at the Atlanta Journal Constitution and edits to her third novel, The Sweetest now writes a dining column for Chicago Fruits, two weeks before this issue of Magazine, but we like his byline best Gravy went to press. Look for it in your when it appears in Gravy. John T. Edge, local bookstore in fall 2019. Meanwhile, who used to pore over Kessler’s AJC if you’re new to Truong’s work, SFA man- reviews when plotting Atlanta trips, once aging director Melissa Hall (who, like ate galbi and drank canned beer with him in the back parking lot of a Buford Highway Truong, is a recovering lawyer) recommends her second novel, Bitter in the Mouth. Korean Restaurant while staring down a soaring tangle of kudzu vines. It involves barbecue, synesthesia, and canned peaches, among other delights. Photos by Brandall Laughlin Brandall Photos by Laughlin Brandall MIDDLE and BOTTOM: Oriana Koren; TOP:

4 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 5 LEFT: Cornfields outside Greenville, MS; DIRECTOR’S CUT BELOW: David White in November 2018

THE POWER TO FEED A Delta epiphany BY JOHN T. EDGE

“And particularly for our children, who had nothing to do with asking to be born into this world…This is a reflection on our society, on all of us.” I wrote about this moment in my book The Potlikker Papers. In my telling, young David White’s hunger taught a lesson about America’s failure to care for its most vulnerable citizens. But his life, as I depicted it, was without dimension. Then I read Delta Epiphany, a new book by my friend and University of Missis- sippi colleague Ellen Meacham. david white was twenty months Open sores pocked his young body. From Ellen, I learned that, at the time old when the crowd of politicians and David’s eyes were flat and his belly was On his visit to the Kennedy toured the Mississippi Delta on reporters came to his Cleveland, Missis- distended. Robert F. Kennedy stroked a poverty fact-finding mission, David’s sippi, home on a spring day in 1967. As the David’s cheek and touched his belly, but Mississippi Delta in mother, Annie White, was fighting hero- man with the fop of brown hair stooped he could he not capture David’s attention. 1967, Senator Robert F. ically to feed her family. She fished. She this past summer, i traveled to the floor, David hungrily scratched for Kennedy was helpless in the face of planted a garden and canned and pre- through Mexico for a week as a guide for crumbs of cornbread and grains of rice. the poverty that David endured every Kennedy was helpless served the harvest. Her brothers shared a Los Angeles Times–organized culinary Annie White raised six children in that day. Dressed in a suit and tie, his shoes and chastened in the the blackbirds, raccoons, squirrels, deer, tour. Our group of mostly middle-aged house with one faucet, no hot water, and glossy with wax, the junior U.S. Senator face of the poverty that and possums they hunted. When Annie white Angelenos sampled street food in no electricity. The family toilet was a hole from New York emerged from David’s White still came up short, she walked the Mexico City, took cooking classes in the in the floor. Come winter, she heated their family home on a dirt alley chastened, David White endured dirt streets of her neighborhood, trading colonial city of Puebla, and ate our weight home with a woodstove. embarrassed, and angry. every day. and borrowing food to feed her children. in mole and handmade tortillas in the Dressed in a tattered and soiled t-shirt “We could be doing more for those I also learned more about David. At southern state of Oaxaca. and diaper, David was small for his age. who are poor,” Kennedy said that day. Ivy Timothy Photos by age fifteen, Ellen reported, he began

6 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 7 Sunset outside Greenville, MS Photos by Celestia Morgan Photos by mowing grass for the Western Sizzlin’ so has his relationship to food. steakhouse in Cleveland, where he On the suggestion of Ellen, I visited worked his way up from dishwasher to David in Greenville this past October. We head cook to assistant manager. After met at the Q Mart on Highway 82, where following his older brother Lorenzo to he now works seven days a week, flat- Dallas, Texas, David raised his own beau- top-frying hamburgers and tossing salads tiful family, sometimes working two jobs with cheddar and bacon. As we talked, to feed his five sons. And then, Missis- one of his colleagues showered a burger sippi called him home. In 2017, David with seasoned salt. And a cloud of grilled TOPIC moved back to the Delta, settling in onion vapors floated toward the ceiling. Greenville, where his sister lives. When David spoke of the dishes he Fifty-plus years after Kennedy’s visit, likes to cook, here and at home, his face FOOD IS WORK Mississippi’s second congressional district, brightened and his eyes shone. I couldn’t which includes David’s old hometown of help but notice how strong and confident LOCATION DATE TICKETS Cleveland and his new home of Greenville, he looked, standing in front of the kitchen now registers the highest rate of food in- he now leads. And I couldn’t help but HAVEN SATURDAY $150 PER PERSON security of any district in the nation. The think: Such is the power we humans gain Birmingham, AL February 9, 2019 (includes food & drink) Mississippi to which he returned is, by when we step into a kitchen to feed our some measures, much the same. But people, like Annie White did back then, David’s role in the state has changed. And and David White does now.

John T. Edge is the founding director of the SFA and the host of TrueSouthon the SEC THANKS TO BIRMINGHAM CVB AND ALABAMA TOURISM FOR THEIR SUPPORT. Network/ESPN. Tickets on sale now at southernfoodways.org 8 southernfoodways.org southern state ofOaxaca. the in tortillas handmade and mole in colonial city of Puebla, and ate our weight Mexico City, took cooking classes in the white Angelenos sampled street food in middle-aged mostly of group tour.Our a through Mexico for a week as a guide for t Los Angeles Times–organized culinary his past summer, i traveled i summer, past his

10 southernfoodways.org goes then Mary.group Josephand The of roles the on take to people two pick and angels, and shepherds as children their up dress neighbors night, Every Christ. Jesus of birth the before lehem that Joseph and Mary endured in Beth- lodging for search the commemorates nine days, from December16 to24, and Mexico. with identified most is it America, Latin across Inns.”Held “The as lates for all Southerners to adopt: historical yet of the moment, and perfect both is that one years, thirty past the that has migrated across the region over newcomer relative a of know do I But punch, or stockings stuffed with oranges. ebrate—no country ham, or brandy milk to partake in holiday traditions y’all cel- chance the neverI’vehad so South, the i GOOD OL'CHICO ’ ve yet to spend a winter in winter a spend to yet ve SUPPER SANCTUARY It’s a Catholic celebration that trans- that celebration Catholic a It’s takes place over place takes Posadas Las IN THESOUTH A lessonfrom LasPosadas BY GUSTAVO ARELLANO Las Posadas .

though, the Christmastime performance adult, an As Church. Catholic the from drifted I away,and far moved cousins up, grew neighborhood my of children its ostensible religious purpose. to thought little gave family.I and grub me, the value of Fordrink). chocolate hot masa-based (a sugar and cinnamon), and champurrado brown in dusted tortillas flour (fried los I could gorge on my aunts’ tamales, buñue- skip lunch each day of the I’d robes. flowing and beards fake wear to got we because Men, Wise Three the of one play to liked always I childhood. comes theminwithfoodandsongs. shelter save for the last one, which wel- offering carols andprayers. from home to home and asks for shelter, Posadas the remember fondly I pilgrims the refuse houses the All left my life years ago, as the as ago, years life my left Posadas was mostly about Posadas so that of my of Posadas

Illustrations by Delphine Lee chapter in New Orleans—launched a dreams where other places didn’t. They sanctuary restaurant movement in 2016. found work, established lives, forged Those who sign up agree to publicly community. declare that their businesses welcome And many of them did so by opening In today’s South, Las Posadas LGBT folks, undocumented immigrants, restaurants. has transcended its Catholic people of color, and other afflicted Those restaurants, in turn, give posada roots. In a secular context, groups. The restaurants a x a decal on to all Southerners. In many small towns, their windows that declare they’re “A Mexican restaurants have taken the it offers the promise of Place at the Table for Everyone.” place of diners or biscuit joints to become sanctuary. Through food. It’s a noble gesture, even if only about a de facto community center. Where forty businesses have signed up in the retirees share tales over margaritas. To welcome strangers. South. Many restaurateurs understand- Where families celebrate birthdays with ably don’t want to involve themselves sombreros and candle-topped scoops of with controversy, especially if it might fried ice cream. a ect their bottom line. Where Southerners can learn about To those folks, I present Las Posadas. their new neighbors. And where strang- Posada is both a place and an action. ers from afar ﬁ nd refuge in a meal. has taken on a deeper meaning—due in “that by welcoming the poor and the To o er posada is to envelop sojourners So for this Christmas, I o er restaura- part to what I see happening in the South. needy, we are welcoming Jesus in our with love, food and shelter. teurs and home cooks alike a challenge: As millions of Latinos have made el Sur midst.” Posadas are easy to stage and o er rich Hold a Posada. You don’t have to adopt their home over the past three decades, In a region that has seen the largest cross-cultural possibilities. Although the the Christian aspect of it if it doesn’t Las Posadas is becoming part of the percentage increase of Latinos of any story is Christian at its root, its underly- mesh with your beliefs. Pay attention to Southern holiday fabric. YouTube videos region of the United States over the past ing message—the welcome of travelers— the lesson of welcoming those rejected feature reenactments from Carrboro, generation, the South now witnesses the is universal. by others. North Carolina, to Hoover, Alabama. incorporation of a holiday that speaks to It’s something the South should take Before each evening of the Posada Pontotoc, Mississippi, to Charlottesville, its core: sanctuary. Through food. To to heart, because ustedes are Las Posadas culminates in a feast, the participants Virginia. welcome strangers. manifest. join in song: “Enter, enter, holy pilgrims, In today’s South, Las Posadas has tran- The region was not a common landing holy pilgrims/Welcome to my humble scended its Catholic roots. For the past when i travel through the South, point for Mexican immigrants until the home/Though ’tis little I can o er/All I two years, the Children’s Museum of I’m always on the lookout for Mexican 1990s. The South became their posada. have please call your own.” Atlanta has offered its own afternoon restaurants. More than keepers of stories, It o ered a chance to realize their Sounds like Southern hospitality. interpretation complete with baile folk- or even places of nourishment, Mexican lorico, storytime, and a make-your-own- restaurants interest me as inns of sorts. Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for Gravy and a features writer for the LATimes. lantern workshop. When I take a seat, I’m back at home in Five years ago, Hugo Olaiz of Forward Southern California, in a place where the Movement, a nonprofit publishing min- fajitas are familiar and the accents istry of the Episcopal Church, wrote a remind me of my parents. guide for Episcopalians on “How to Cel- I seek a sanctuary. I’m not the only one. ebrate a Mexican Posada.” The idea of restaurants as safe spaces is Argentinean by birth, Olaiz arrived becoming increasingly popular nation- tino North Carolina to spread the Good wide, owing to our political climate and News and was wowed by the Posadas of to the continued battle against the racism Peruse the Gravy print and his Mexican neighbors. He saw an op- and sexism that has too long plagued the podcast archives, including all of portunity to connect longtime residents restaurant industry. Toward that end, the Gustavo Arellano’s “Good Ol’ Chico” to newcomers with a holiday where Restaurant Opportunities Centers Unit- columns, at the newly redesigned neighborly love is central. ed—a nonprofit that advocates for low- southernfoodways.org “We learn from the Posadas,” he wrote, wage restaurant workers and has a

12 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 13 SFA Announces 2019 Programming: Five FOOD IS WORK Ways of WINTER SYMPOSIUM FEBRUARY 9 Reading Birmingham, AL Tickets, priced at $150, are on sale now Food sfa asked our 2018 fall symposium speakers to read food—through a variety of SUMMER FIELD TRIP lenses, and from all angles. From menus to novels to soap operas, they delivered. JUNE 14–15 What do we mean when we talk about reading food? We mean to regard cooking, serving, dining, Bentonville, AR and the myriad practices associated with food as Tickets go on sale April 1 texts that offer the pleasures, challenges, truths, and possibilities of great literature. The five pieces that follow are adapted from Fall Symposium presentations. Allow them to FALL SYMPOSIUM surprise, provoke, educate, and delight you. OCTOBER 24–26 Oxford, MS Tickets go on sale August 1 15 Winter 2018 I OFTEN LIKE TO ASK Self-illumination MY STUDENTS, “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT by SENTENCE IN THE BIBLE?”

sweet The answers tend to be obvious, like “For I am obsessed with Moby-Dick and Toni God so loved the world that He gave His Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and, on only begotten son.” Or, “In the beginning, given days, Robert Penn Warren’s All God created the heaven and the earth.” the King’s Men. However, if I were a potato Or, “No more water but fire next time,” betting man and you made me put money which is not in the Bible. Or any number down on it, I could make a powerful of other famous and meaningful verses. argument for Ralph Ellison’s 1952, But I like to point to the moment in the award-winning novel, Invisible Man. It third chapter of Exodus when Moses might could be the Great American stands before the burning bush and has novel. It might could be. a conversation with the Almighty. Moses asks whom he should tell Pharaoh sent him to court to demand the release of IF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH THE the Hebrew slaves. The flaming bush book, please allow me to give a brief replies, “I am that I am.” Powerful stuff, description. don’t you think? “I am that I am.” Many critics like to call Invisible Man Once upon a time, Americans spoke a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age novel, with great seriousness about the Great which it is. But I like to think of it as more American Novel. There could only be of a picaresque in the mode of Cervant- by one. And the people who took this series’ Don Quixote, where our main char- ously assumed the author would be a acter is on the road, traveling, or wan- man, probably a white man. dering, with purpose, and, like the man Over the years, those tenants—even from La Mancha, the protagonist lacks Randall the underlying question—seem to have self-awareness but comes to see his own fallen out of favor, for better or for worse. delusion by and by. Our hero begins in Kenan When is the last time you heard someone the South, at a school very much like take seriously the idea of the Great Amer- Tuskegee Institute, where Ellison studied ican Novel? music, in the shadow of the recently dead But, being a gentleman of a certain age, founder, Booker T. Washington; our hero the concept swims to the surface of my who moves North, as did Ellison, first to

Photos by Oriana Koren Photos by mind from time to time to time. Personally, Chicago, and then to Harlem, New York.

Winter 2018 17 With a huge nod to Dostoyevsky’s FOR OUR PURPOSES, I’LL FOCUS ON Notes from the Underground, Ellison gives chapter thirteen. By now we have gotten us an unnamed narrator who tells his well into the meat of the story, and, like story of essentially being on the lam, Don Quixote, our hero is coming to some holed up in a basement or subway tunnel self-illumination. Where 1,369 light bulbs in Manhattan, illuminated by “1,369 could not help him, a particular edible lights.” This fantastical element is root would come to the rescue. another source of Ellison’s genius: The “‘Get yo’ hot, baked Car’lina yam,’” calls book takes on many tones throughout its out a street vendor: 581 pages—surrealism, expressionism, social realism, oral history. At the corner the old man, wrapped in On top of all that, Ellison’s language is an army overcoat, his feet covered with nothing short of virtuosic, a nearly im- gunny sacks, his head in a knitted cap, possible feat to maintain over such a long was puttering with a stack of paper bags. distance. He gives us the English of I saw a crude sign on the side of the Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration; wagon proclaiming yams, as I walked he gives us Ralph Waldo Emerson’s high flush into the warmth thrown by the essay style; he gives us African American coals that glowed in a grate underneath. English flavored with salt pork and collard greens; he gives us the language We are in Harlem, USA, probably of American mass media and business. sometime between the two Great Wars. Here are two facts that people often conveniently forget about Harlem, if they know them at all. First: Harlem, as we have come to know it, is essentially a Southern City at the north of Manhattan was not only largely African American, Carolinas (My native North Carolina now Island. Harlem became largely populat- but it was also sweetly Southern. We produces 60 percent of the nation’s sweet ed by black Southerners fleeing North & could think of it as a Negro colony of the potatoes, I’m proud to say.) And a wise That Southern South Carolina and Virginia and Georgia South taken root in the North. Southern entrepreneur would be providing what and Alabama and Florida from the years culture—language, arts, religion, and of was most familiar to his clientele at a black folk away in just before World War I to the middle of course, foodways—predominated north bargain price. Moreover, sweet potatoes the Great Depression. A great many of 125th Street all the way up to Edge- are wonderfully mobile. cold New York arrived from the South on a locomotive combe Avenue. I did say “sweet potato” and not “yam.” train line known affectionately as the Nowadays we think of food trucks as The yam is a product of Africa and Asia. would be catered Chicken Bone Special. The second thing a culinary trend. We have television The sweet potato is a New World Root. to with piping-hot is that Harlem is essentially a twenti- shows and movies about them. But in Sweet potatoes are dense and orange, eth-century phenomenon. In the nine- truth, they are as old as cities. Thebes, rich in beta-carotene; yams are drier, yams makes bold teenth century, black folk lived all over Athens, Ur, Edo: All had food carts of starchier, and lighter in color. Linguists the island, and even had a village, Seneca, some fashion. Bringing the food to the can’t agree on when or exactly why it good sense, and within the city where now Central Park people always made good business sense, happened, but English speakers have is located. It existed from 1825 to 1857, and we have had the wheel for a good been confusing the two foods for centu- reflects the reality when it was torn down in the name of long time. ries, using sweet potato and yam inter- civic renewal. It was a foretaste of what That Southern black folk away in cold changeably—which is a rather fitting of the time. And would happen to so many black commu- New York would be catered to with pip- metaphor for America. At Thanksgiving sweet potatoes are nities across North America in the twen- ing-hot yams makes bold good sense, and when my aunts put out the candied yams, tieth century. reflects the reality of the time. The sweet I don’t correct them. I know they know wonderfully mobile. So what we think of today as Harlem potato was a standard, especially in the they are feeding me sweet potatoes, but

18 Winter 2018 19 “candied yams” just sounds so darn that Ellison and his good buddy, the nov- AS A BOY, I LOVED ME SOME POPEYE. The hallmark of festive. elist Richard Wright, were both deeply When I first read this book, back in my Surely that is how the protagonist in influenced by the European novel of ideas, late teens, the idea that Ralph Ellison food in literature, Invisible Man feels when he encounters philosophy masquerading as fiction. was playing with a cartoon character, a the Carolina Yams on the streets of Think Albert Camus, think Jean-Paul cartoon character who got his super raised to the level Harlem: Sartre. Ellison floats weighty philosoph- powers from spinach—canned spinach— ical ideas throughout the novel, but buoy- and the idea that a fancy-pants intellec- of art, is food “How much are your yams?” I said, antly, concretely, this yam episode in tual, National Book Award–winning suddenly hungry. chapter thirteen being one of his most novelist would play around with pop interacting with “They ten cents and they sweet,” he successful forays. The other point is that culture, seemed well beyond the veil, but character, food as said, his voice quavering with age. chapter thirteen in particular is packed Popeye had been around for decades by “These ain’t none of them binding ones full of food imagery. Not long after the 1952, and Ellison was clearly and inten- character, food neither. These here is real, sweet, yaller aforementioned breaking of the yam, the tionally messing with us like that. “I yam yams. How many?” narrator invokes: “You’re a shameless what I am!” doing stuff, food “One,” I said, “If they’re that good, chitterling eater!” He talks about mustard As a sometime literary critic and as a one should be enough.” greens, pig ears, pork chops and black- writer of fiction, I militate against the being stuff. The ...I knew that it was sweet before I eyed peas, “with dull accusing eyes.” term “symbol.” Symbols are the stuff of broke it; bubbles of brown syrup had Our hero goes on such a Camus-style literary garden parties and seventh-grade best writers know burst the skin… reverie that he comes to confront his own English classes. They are weak beer, and that food is “Break it and I’ll give you some conflicted notions and emotions about we are looking for the strong stuff. What butter since you gon’ eat it right here. blackness, which leads him to declare of Ellison is doing here is much more akin identity, food is Lots of folks takes ’em home. They got the yam: “They’re my birthmark,” I said. to moonshine. It can make a dead man their own butter at home.” “I yam what I am!” holler. alive, food is us. I broke it, seeing the sugary pulp And to ultimately think: The yam/sweet potato in Invisible Man steaming in the cold...I held it, watch- is not simply a symbol. It has a function. ing him pour a spoonful of melted What and how much had I lost by It is a character. In many ways, it is alive. butter over the yam and the butter trying to do only what was expected (In fact it was, once!) seeping in. of me instead of what I myself had For me, the hallmark of food in litera- wished to do? What a waste, what a ture, raised to the level of art, is food I yam what I am! And later: senseless waste! But what of those interacting with character, food as char- “I am that I am” is of course the King things which you actually didn’t like, acter, food doing stuff, food being stuff, James translation of the Old Testament I took a bite, finding it as sweet and hot not because you were not supposed to just as it happens with our flesh and Pentateuch. Other translations from the as any I’d ever had, and was overcome like them, not because to dislike them blood, our mouths and our bellies and original Hebrew have it as, “I am who I with such a surge of homesickness that was considered a mark of refinement our memories. The best writers, the am,” “I am he who is,” and “I am because I turned away to keep my control. I and education—but because you actu- better writers, know that food is identi- I am,” among many other permutations. walked along, munching the yam, just ally found them distasteful? ...How ty, food is alive, food is us. Language can do that. as suddenly overcome by an intense could you know? It involved a problem Gertrude Stein once observed, it is Language bends. Language reflects and feeling of freedom—simply because I of choice. I would have to weigh many rude to have your characters sit down to refracts. Language resonates. Language was eating while walking along the things carefully before deciding and dine and not tell the reader what they multiplies and has multiple meanings. street. It was exhilarating. I no longer there would be some things that would are eating. This notion always made pro- Language confounds. Language comforts. had to worry about who saw me or cause quite a bit of trouble, simply found sense to me. I always tell you what Language is how we take hold of the about what was proper. To hell with because I had never formed a person- my people eat, what they love, what they world. “I will be what I will be.” “I create all that, and as sweet as the yam actual attitude toward so much. I had ac- hate to put in their mouths. what I create.” I am what I yam. ally was, it became like nectar with the cepted the accepted attitudes and it thought. had made life seem simple... Randall Kenan is the author of six books of fiction and nonfiction. He delivered a version of this piece on the porch of William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak at the 2018 I should point out here two things: One, “I yam what I am!” Southern Foodways Symposium.

20 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 21 Black Food

Reading the Lupton Collection on by ravi howard White Pages In a 2012 interview with The Guardian,

Toni Morrison recounted the time her white employer complained about her cleaning skills, and Morrison asked her father for advice. “‘Go to work, get your money, and come home. You don’t live there.’” He told her that she was not obliged Oaxaca is a state that has proudly kept its to live as they saw her in their imagination. indigenous traditions alive—music, clothing, I thought about that idea—go to work, kitchen work focused on service to and especially food— get your money, and come home—as I white families. traced the history of black writing about I wanted to start at the beginning to for centuries in the food in the David Walker Lupton African see what the chronology told about this face of encroaching American Cookbook Collection at the collection. Robert Roberts’ 1827 book, University of Alabama, one of the largest The House Servant’s Directory, became modernity. collections of African American food a popular reference book for black books under one roof. workers, written to help them satisfy Reading through the archive, I fol- their employers. The servants’ main lowed an arc from the service-based concerns were the tastes of the employ- narratives of the early nineteenth ers and their guests. Roberts structured century to mid-twentieth-century books the book as a collection of letters to two that described homecomings for the men, Joseph and David, described as his cooks and leisure time their predeces- young friends who were just entering sors rarely enjoyed. Thinking about the service profession. those more recent books, I was guided by Toni Tipton-Martin and her descrip- Now, my young friends, you must con- tion, in The Jemima Code, of the work sider that to live in a gentleman’s of Edna Lewis as a first-hand narrative. family as a house servant is a station Those personal stories, I realized, re- that will seem wholly different… this vealed a closeness between the cook and station of life comprises comforts, the audience, a relationship that was privileges, and pleasures, which are

hard-won and much different than to be found in but few other stations Oriana Koren Photos by

24 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 25 in which you may enter; and on the Servants learned how to enjoy success other hand many difficulties, trials of and sidestep danger. Roberts included temper, &c. more perhaps than in any pages on troubleshooting during dinner other station in which you might parties. He prescribed the following in enter…. Therefore, my young friends, the section entitled, “To Cure Those Who when you hire yourself to a lady or Are Given to Drink.” gentleman, your time or your ability is no longer your own, … and my Put, in sufficient quantity of rum, sincere advice to you is, always to brandy, gin, or whatever liquor the study to give general satisfaction to person is in the habit of drinking, three your employers, and by doing so you large live eels, which leave until quite are sure to gain credit for yourself. dead, give this liquor unawares to those you wish to reform, and they I was drawn to these lines: Many dif- will get so disgusted against it, that… ficulties. Trials of temper. More perhaps they will have quite an aversion to it than in any other station. Your time and afterwards; this I have seen tried and ability are not your own. have the good effect on the person Understanding how Roberts’ early life who drank it. shaped that advice necessitated a look outside those pages to consider his bi- “This I have seen tried.” There was ography. He was born in South Carolina something upbeat and even humorous between 1777 and 1780. We do not know in the way he made everything plain. whether he was once enslaved. He Roberts knew that he could not refuse arrived in Boston as a young man in 1805. service to an inebriated guest of his Later, he married a woman named employers. So he follows the round- Dorothy Hall. Three of Dorothy’s broth- about paths of black culture, through ers, James, Aaron, and William, were the eels that wriggle in the glass of a abducted and sold into slavery. James whiskey bottle. was sold to New Orleans. William This is the black countermelody: a escaped his captors in the West Indies duet, in which one voice is public and and fled to England. He sent word home another private. twenty years later. Aaron was never This job will diminish you if you let it. heard from again. Even if you push back, that may not be The man addressing the letters to enough. Still, here is a path. Joseph and David was also grieving the loss of his brothers-in-law James, William, and Aaron. What was on the ust as roberts out- menu at his employer’s home the day lined the perils of Boston in after the first of the three was kidnapped? the early 1800s, Liza Ashley’s How did the trip to the market or the Thirty Years at the Mansion fishmonger feel as Roberts carried this described the challenges of news? Roberts did not warn his young Jentertaining and cooking for Arkansas charges of this kind of terror. The price Governor Orval Faubus in the 1950s. of candor at that time was too high. Beyond the choreography of service Since the state did not appropriate the and expert direction on cooking, another funds to hire enough help, the Fau- set of instructions lived in his book. buses brought in prisoners from

26 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 27 Cummins to help in the kitchen and the complexities of her role. I imagine the yard…..Since Mrs. Faubus did not Governor Faubus eating a slice of pound have very much experience in cooking cake in silence. I imagine Ashley’s and running a household, I did most silence, too, and all the questions that of the planning of the meals…We were never asked. worked six days a week and never had Sundays off….We also worked all the holidays because the Faubuses always aking your money had lots of company. and coming home was central to the Liza Ashley was serving Faubus when story in Dori Sanders’ black teenagers integrated Little Rock’s Country Cooking: Central High School in 1957. She was MRecipes and Stories from the Family Farm there when the federal troops arrived. Stand. Born in 1935, Sanders recounted Ashley’s daily routine in the midst of the homecoming of her Great Aunt upheaval added a new layer to a familiar Vestula, who spent much of her adult life history. as the live-in help on plantations around She described President Eisenhower Charleston, South Carolina. sending troops “to shield” nine black students. The word choice was subtle, By the time Aunt Vestula moved in with but Ashley seemed to show a kinship us, she was too feeble to cook, but she with the students. Although a friendship was always in the kitchen when my developed between Ashley and the Fau- mama was cooking…. While my mama buses, who named a granddaughter cooked, Aunt Vestula tried to instruct Elizabeth in her honor, such bonds did her….Aunt Vestula often reminded her little to weaken the hold of segregation, to pick a few shallots or leeks to sauté a system that Governor Faubus defend- along with the fresh wild mushrooms, ed. In his book South to An Old Place, or to be sure to add just a little mild Albert Murray challenged William Faulk- sherry…. But sometimes my mama ner’s loving memory of the black woman would cut up an onion or a clove of who helped to raise him. Murray asked garlic that she hadn’t planned on using. whether that love transferred to her children, the sorts of kids who integrat- Sanders’ descriptions of rationing and ed high schools in the 1950s and became scarcity made her writing vivid. She activists in the 1960s. wrote about Seed-Ordering Day and I wonder how Liza Ashley negotiated described the family gathered around the affection of the Faubuses. I wonder the catalog. Her prose presented a what she heard around their table. I Southern lushness, but not the kind that wonder how she felt when she saw and glossed over the toil of the black cook heard all that anger directed toward the or farmer or laborer. By isolating what students of Central High. She described was precious, Sanders revealed the fam- the Governor as a quiet man who liked ily’s limited resources. Abundance, in to sit in the kitchen and eat the pound the form of crops like okra and squash, cake that she baked. Ashley’s recipe was seasonal, and often uneven. Aunt offers the simplicity of a beloved sta- Vestula savored the sherry that came ple—a pound of butter, half a dozen eggs, from the employer, but the bottle was three cups of sugar—measured against only so big. Her taste for that ingredient

28 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 29 was unsustainable. behind the tall hollyhocks, they would want to try to communicate why I cook. ground beef benendict or sherried Speaking to frugality, Sanders told the hide a kitchen garden. Practically speaking I don’t have to chicken thighs. He wrote, “While the origin story of her grandmother’s molas- cook at all. I could make arrangements recipe is for another dinner-for-one, it ses bread. One day while cooking, her Again, that countermelody. The voice to have all of that done for us. I cook easily multiplies by two or four since this grandmother filled the oven, leaving only of service used trickery to gain a bit of land because emotionally it is necessary for may well become one of your favorite two spaces that were too narrow for a and time. Sanders’ writing conveyed this me to cook, and I want to explore this company entrees.” If you’re having common baking pan. She found a solu- kind of leverage and the creativity required mystical satisfaction, this meaning and company over, that is fine, but it’s a choice tion. Coffee cans. for survival. Many recipes in the Lupton joy that comes from my activities in and not an obligation. The inner voice Consider the landscape within this Collection served as structured reenact- the kitchen. controls the story and the setting. oven, the space so precious that all of it ments of leaner times. Making the Pearl Bailey and Johnny Mathis told should be used. There was plenty of recipes—or simply reading them as liter- I was taken with that passage. And I us that these books were the story of a room in Dori Sanders’ own oven, but ature—can be an act of an imagined or was also taken with what you won’t find journey away from their audiences or the coffee can was as much a part of the performed remembrance. in her book. She was less concerned with customary direction. We, the readers, recipe as molasses, raisins, and dried the precise measures of the standard could direct, perform, and alter as we apples. The continued use of that coffee cookbooks. Her precision came in her needed, or better yet, as we chose. can brought to mind a time when space lack domestic ser - prose. So often, a recipe was wrapped in Maybe that ingredient, choice, was what was limited. vants were required to play a story. The absence of details invited the earlier volumes didn’t allow, at least Dori Sanders’ resourcefulness allowed a role, and so many of the creativity. She named one of her recipes not openly. her to see beauty in things that would be Lupton holdings outlined Baked Sole Spontaneous. “Just about the In those service narratives, there was killed and rooted out. Her recipes for the domestic stage direction. time I closed the oven door, I had this only one way, and missing the mark was poke and dandelion, a kind of flower offal, BHowever, cookbooks written by black weird idea.” So she added a little some- disastrous. But by the 1970s, there was were given the same kind of attention as entertainers provided insight into their thing: Accent seasoning salt and Parme- room for improvisation. There was the sweetbreads, gizzards, and innards lives away from the expectations, away san cheese. Reading the collection, I freedom. As the great American song- in other books in the Lupton collection. from the life that Toni Morrison’s father peered through the open door of spon- book delivered standards interpreted by There was a respect for what may be referenced—a limited space in the white taneity. I glimpsed a freedom to take the likes of Bailey and Mathis—“Sweet unworthy elsewhere. There was a place imagination. I read with the countermel- recipes and do what you would with Georgia Brown” and “Chances Are”— for it on her table. ody idea in mind, considering the Holly- them. If you didn’t have fresh, use put-up these books gave the same opportunities Like Roberts, Sanders’ family had to wood character versus the off-duty indi- or store-bought. to a generation of home cooks. use conceits to move toward freedom. vidual. In many cases, wealth and success The invitation was clear. Substitute as This is what is beautiful about the She shared the stories of enslaved labor- gave them more freedom and candor. needed. Season to taste. Come as you are. Lupton Collection. We get this sense of ers who took that step in the garden. For Pearl’s Kitchen: An Extraordinary Another moment of silence and soli- black ownership and the power of rec- Cookbook (1973), the Tony Award– tude gave a notable contrast to the croon- ognition. A powerful part of this is the Some plantation owners wouldn’t winning actress and singer Pearl Bailey ing stage presence of Johnny Mathis, a feeling of the freedom, the autonomy, to allow slaves even to have a garden. began alone at her kitchen table, the star I imagine in filled venues. Mathis improvise. A silent musing, time to think, They didn’t want slaves wasting time place she called “the center of my created a much different performance to create, and to get the mental rest that or valuable land on private gardens. silence.” space in his 1982 cookbook, Cooking for makes that possible. The wanted them working in those You Alone. Mathis’ cookbook had a plastic Toni Morrison learned the importance cotton fields. According to our hand- It is almost two in the morning and I cover embossed with music notes, and of the sojourn, to make your money and ed-down tradition, many slave women am sitting at my kitchen table alone…. it could be folded like a music stand and return to a place that is yours. The writers would say to the plantation overseer, Sitting here thinking of yesterday and set on a piano. The recipes were designed of the Lupton narratives followed that “Oh, I just want me a few buckets of cooking for tomorrow, I have written to mimic sheet music, composed in the same journey, a long slow arc from the hollyhocks, a few little rows of flowers.” this book. It is a cookbook, but not a key of solitude. required work of service to the creative Well, the overseer couldn’t find an typical one. I’ll tell you how to make It was a love song to the self. A meal at labor that let them define the tastes and excuse to deny a woman her little some wonderful dishes all right, but I home, alone, is a worthy occasion for feeling of home. flowers, which required almost no care, don’t want to do just that and nothing so he’d give her permission. The slave more. While I am telling you what I Ravi Howard is the author of Like Trees, Walking, and Driving the King. women would plant their flowers – and cook and approximately how I do it, I He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

30 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 31 Recipes from a HUNGRY MAN The search for Lafcadio Hearn by MONIQUE TRUONG

Winter 2018 33 New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, What I had before me was an outline In 2009, Volume 7: Foodways, edited by John T. of a man—described in the entry as “ro- Edge. As I flipped through its pages, mantic” and “imaginative”—seated in tucked between the entries for “hash, front of a very full plate. Greek, Irish, South Carolina,” and “Hill, Annabella Creole, and Japanese? That was an overly SUGAR Powell,” an unusual, geographically dif- ambitious buffet, a quarrel of flavors. ficult-to-pinpoint name caught my eye: On the second reading, slower this time “Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904),” identified and considering the magnitude of his and as a “journalist, author, and illustrator.” travels, I recognized Lafcadio Hearn as The entry, written by Scott R. Simmons, a writer who had made the reverse mi- began with Lafcadio Hearn’s birth on the gration that I’d made in my own life. CORNBREAD Greek island of Lefkada; went on to de- Hearn went from West to East. More scribe a lonely childhood in Dublin, significantly, he chose East. Ireland; followed by an emigration to When I came to the United States with led me to Cincinnati, Ohio, as a young man; and a my family as refugees from the Vietnam subsequent migration to New Orleans, War, I was six years old, and the decision where the entry revealed this Greek-Irish- to leave all that we knew behind—our man’s contribution to the history of extended family, our first language, all LAFCADIO Southern food: of the physical and emotional assemblage [Lafcadio Hearn]…opened the short- of home—wasn’t mine to make. It was a lived 5-Cent Restaurant and collected journey that changed the course of our HEARN. recipes of local dishes. Hearn published lives and, as my father would have told these recipes in 1885 as La Cuisine Créole, you, a journey that allowed us to contin- which became the earliest published col- ue living. For him, it was a clear-cut lection of New Orleans and Louisiana decision. Because of my father’s position recipes…[, which] continues to serve as an in an international oil company and My second novel, Bitter in the Mouth, As the author of a previous food-cen- invaluable record of the history of Creole because the U.S. government wanted to set in the small North Carolina town tric novel—The Book of Salt, about a food, New Orleans, and Louisiana. ensure that the South Vietnamese forces where I grew up, was coming out the young Vietnamese man who worked as The entry then served up Hearn’s would have no disruptions in their fuel following year, and it would include this a live-in cook in the Paris home of the second act, or second course as it were, supply, he was able to bargain his safety passage: American authors Gertrude Stein and which was entirely unexpected: and life for that of his young family’s. In Alice B. Toklas—as well as articles for Hearn moved to Japan, taught English, exchange for my mother’s and my de- My great-grandfather Graven Ham- Gourmet, Food &Wine, and the New York changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo, parture in the safety of a U.S. military merick, upon his return from New Times, I knew that a surprising number married a Japanese woman who was the cargo plane, he stayed behind until the Haven, [Connecticut,] was said to have of my readers would have deep histor- daughter of a samurai…and continued his day Saigon fell. He then left by boat, refused the cornbreads served to him ical knowledge of regional cornbread voluminous writing…. Hearn secured a joining the flotilla that would be known by his mother because they weren’t recipes. They would agitate and foment place in history after publishing numerous as “the Boat people.” sweet enough for his northern-influ- if my assertion, vis-à-vis the sugar dis- volumes…particularly Japanese fairy tales. The Vietnamese word for “country” is enced palate. Because she couldn’t tinction, were made in error. I also knew The entry concluded with the barest “nuoc.” “Nuoc” also means water, and the stand the sight of him not eating, his that, to some readers, I, oddly, wouldn’t facts of this man’s passing: Japan, Sep- open water of the South China Sea became mother always had a batch made just appear to be a credible font of Southern tember 26, 1904. the only country my father and so many for him with heaping spoonfuls of food lore. I needed to have a published I reread the apocryphal-seeming nub others had left. As an adult, I’ve asked sugar added to the batter, but she also citation from a trusted source. I needed of a biography. Little of it made sense to myself many times if I would have made made it a point to wrap…[them in] a cornbread corroboration. me, the sentences harboring a random the same choice. Would I have been so black cloth before bringing them to the In my small but well-stocked kitchen collection of facts and locales. Also, I clear-headed, mentally tough, optimistic, table. She wanted to remind her son in Brooklyn, I had culinary reference sensed that all the good bits—the crackling and brave? To me, these are the necessary

that something inside of him had died. books of all kinds. Among them was The PREVIOUS SPREAD: Oriana Koren in the cornbread, if you will—were missing. traits that all immigrants must posses.

34 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 35 36 southernfoodways.org by followed was it cookbook, the time he included the word “servant” in only the as housewives, unidentified the same worldview as these otherwise there wasn’t a“Mrs.” insight. Lester, Jenny, Haly, Miss and Little Jessie—but Shattuck, Miss Beecher, Miss recipes—a their with identified women six of names the found I housewives, the for As name. by indentified were housewives,” though none of these chefs Creole noted and chefs “leading from West IndianandMexican.” of the American, French, Spanish, Italian, in its nature, blending the characteristics enthused that the city was “cosmopolitan he introduction, brief his In Orleans. learned why he was enamored with New From cookbook. his reading by Hearn with engagement through the language of food, I began my ravenous inalandofplenty. home.Wenew our ourselves find often in source to difficult and scarce be can empathy, affinity, communion, and love— ingredients—caring, pivotal the that find shores, other to immigrated have the recipes but upon the cooks. We, who ference, we know, is not dependent upon but for the next fulfilling meal. The dif keen desire not for the next filling meal the obsession: an us within carry often the minutiae of the kitchen and the table, so, Iknew. hungry; an immigrant one was even more author, same as a food writer, cookbook was always A soul. and body fed that for a sense of belonging, for a daily meal that Hearn was hungry: for love, family, what he was looking for. My gut told me found had globe, the circumnavigating after he, whether and Hearn, Lafcadio I learned that Hearn clearly shared clearly Hearn that learned I I learned that his recipes were sourced best world the understand I Because We, who make it our business to know I wanted to know what had propelled , I Créole , Cuisine La -

teenth-century biases and blinders, a blinders, and biases teenth-century man I also met a Lafcadio Hearn who was a him in his city of choice, New Orleans. ture of peoples and flavors that greeted reveled in the heady, exuberant admix who time, his for man exceptional an got to know a Lafcadio Hearn who was women ingeneral: will succeed.” batter too thick. But try again, and you the made and meal, much too in put haveyou because be will it nice, not is recipe for Mississippi Cornbread: “If it for instance, was how Hearn ended the This, his. means no by and theirs was housewives failed to do so, then the fault young these if that, learned I book. his from cooking” of “art the learning by contentment” “domestic ensure could who housewives young were simplicity. onion here was his nod to economy and one the that assuming I’m onion…” large one and juice, their with oysters “Take100 began, that soup for recipe a included he later pages of couple a value “economy and simplicity,” and yet professedhe to that morsels.learned I delicious into transform and save foods that the “Creole housewife” would away threw who servant travagant” “ex the about wrote Hearn criticism. On the pages of pages the On Hearnwhat learned of also thought I readers intended the that learned I hrfr ae etr ok and command higherpricesforservices. cooks better are therefore by law and abide more closely to rule; governed more are power reasoning instinctive superior their with men ry. Few female cooks think of this, but as though emanating from a laborato should be carefully weighed and tested dishes certain of ingredients [T]he his time, limited by late-nine by limited time, his of , I Créole , Cuisine La - - - -

Arnold Genthe/Library of Congress The ofLafcadio courtyard Hearn’s formerLouis homeonSt. Street inNewOrleans man who —two decades after the end of Here’s what Alethea Foley thought of the middle of summer, but Mrs. Haslam If I were to add to the encyclopedia the Civil War—did not include one word the twenty-two-year-old Lafcadio Hearn always had me prepare a soup because entry for Hearn, it would read as follows: about slavery nor the labor of the en- when she first set eyes on him in 1872. she said it filled people up, and they An immigrant thrice over, Lafcadio slaved people who had made it possible In The Sweetest Fruits, we find her still would eat less of the pies and the roasts, Hearn was known by different names for a household recipe to begin with a in Cincinnati, but it’s 1905, thirty-three which were more costly for her to wherever he landed. Whether he was directive such as “take 100 oysters.” I years after the fact. She’s giving an inter- provide. Mr. Bean liked a nip of gin Patricio (on Lefkada), Patrick (in Ireland), found a man who had no qualms about view to a newspaper reporter about the before and after supper, so I thought Lafcadio (in the United States) or profiting from the work products and now-deceased author, whom she re- that he was already slurring his words Yakumo (in Japan), he remained a con- creativity of others with little or no at- ferred to as “Pat.” when he said, “This young fellow is summate outsider, an awkward introvert, tribution; a man who appreciated the named Laf-ca-di-o Hearn.” short, and blind in one eye. Hearn’s pro- company of women, in particular the Pat wasn’t from here. My ears couldn’t recognize “Lafca- lific body of work was animated by his single ones or the servant ones. In other That was my first thought when I dio” as a man’s name back then. I’d travels, self-inventions and reinventions, words, I found a man who was a com- saw him at Mrs. Haslam’s boarding never met another. obdurate search for belonging, attraction plicated piece of work, whom I wanted house. I didn’t know his name right to the “exotic” and “the Other,” and a to grab by his starched white collar and then, but that hunch would prove to According to newspaper accounts, belief in the transformative power of a shake some sense into. be more than true. after Hearn’s passing Foley had to file a good meal. His life and his writing stand Some cookbooks make me want to While I was in the kitchen, Mrs. suit against his estate in order to claim as testament to the unexpected and the cook. Lafcadio Hearn’s made me want to Haslam’s was always full. If you were that she was his first and only lawful wife. life changing that necessarily occur, get into a fight. Do you know how novel- the kind who were only passing She lost and would be written out of his when disparate peoples, cultures, and ists fight? We write a novel about you. through, you might not give much official biography for decades thereafter. appetites meet. thought to the supper table, but if you In my version of Hearn’s life, I imagine Plus—apologies to the author and the were a stayer—the spinsters and the the possibilities, impulses, and desires editor—one erratum: ine years later, my widowers—then a fruit pie every other Hearn’s 5-Cent Restaurant was so Lafcadio Hearn novel is night and a roast on Sundays were “short-lived” that it, in fact, never opened done. My argument with him sought-after fare. Some cookbooks under that name. Located at 160 Dryades took a while; arguments Faces like Pat’s were the ones that Street, the advertised “cheapest eating Nworth having often do. I’ve entitled it I’d learned not to get attached to. I make me want to cook. house in the South” was renamed The The Sweetest Fruits, and now you know didn’t even bother with their names. Lafcadio Hearn’s made Hard Times, prior to its opening on where this motif of sweetness originated. Same as horses on a farm, the color of March 2, 1879. The Hard Times closed The novel is told from the points of view their hair was enough to identify them. me want to fight. Do on March 22, 1879, leaving Lafcadio of three women in Hearn’s life: his Greek Chestnut, bay, blond, or black as coal you know how novelists Hearn broke and still hungry. mother, Rosa Cassimati; his African in Pat’s case. If they were male and fight? We write a novel It seems fitting to invite Alethea Foley, American wife, Alethea Foley, who was young, they were soon headed else- a cook by profession, to have the last born into slavery in Kentucky and who, where. Out West, down South, back about you. words. Here’s what she, in The Sweetest after the Civil War, was employed as a East, wherever the trains and steam- Fruits, has to say about this café. cook at his boarding house in Cincinna- boats could take them. ti, Ohio; and his Japanese wife, Koizumi Before the war, when we heard “Cin- that kept this man in motion. His answers, I’m not surprised that you hadn’t Setsu. She was, as the foodways encyclo- cinnati,” we thought of the Promised awash in wanderlust and transformations, heard…[of it]. I wouldn’t have thought pedia entry noted, the daughter of a Land, the Ohio our River Jordan. Who are not the same as my own, but I have that such a place would last long. I don’t former samurai, but was destitute when knew that the Promised Land would felt an insatiable pull and even an affection know who came up with the scheme, she came to work for Hearn as a house- be full of young white men itching to toward this literary wanderer as I’ve trav- but I’m guessing it was Pat, who came maid. In my novel, I also include excerpts go elsewhere? eled with him for nearly a decade, getting to Cincinnati with nothing, who shov- written by Hearn’s first biographer, Eliz- Mr. Bean, the printing house man lost in locales and languages, and finding eled dirt and dung for his suppers, who abeth Bisland, a young woman whom he with the gray hair and gray fingernails, for my Lafcadio a home, not again, but for never forgot how much he had to pay met in New Orleans and who went on to was introducing Pat to the other board- the very first time. for so little on his plate. become a renowned journalist, editor, ers seated at the table, and I was placing and writer in New York City. a tureen down on the sideboard. It was Monique Truong’s third novel, The Sweetest Fruits, is forthcoming from Viking Books.

38 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 39 Photos by Oriana Koren BETWEEN menus, which Itucked into afolder onmy desk. the only retained I pads. mouse keepsake the and tects, of styled food, the chef bios, the statements from the archi the mailroom garbage can, throwing out the glossy pictures the opening of a new restaurant. I usually opened them over to send me thick envelopes with press releases to announce used firms relations public online, went everything Before since. hundreds many reviewed have I time. first the for ONE HALF OF MY LIFETIME AGO, I REVIEWED A RESTAURANT by JohnKessler On menus as texts THE LINES Winter 2018 41 -

I often looked through this folder of When Eater published a parody menu in Even though I no longer live in Atlanta, beurre—a technique of whisking butter menus—augmented with others I filched 2014 called “Every Trendy Restaurant I stay current on its best restaurants—old into a sauce to make it rich and glossy. It from restaurants, and later, those I’d Menu,” diners throughout the country habits die hard. Specifically, if I pull is a subtle reminder of the kitchen’s foun- downloaded—as if I were reading a col- enjoyed a collective snicker. I particu- recent menus from three of the city’s dation in classical French technique. lection of short stories. In essence, that’s larly liked the “moules frites that spent most lauded chef-driven restaurants and A few miles south at Staplehouse, chef what they were. Each menu told a brief, a semester in Thailand.” give them a close read, they can, taken Ryan Smith offers a nightly tasting menu. evocative narrative. Together, they com- together, offer a small universe of insight. Like most tasting menus, it is center-jus- prised a sprawling story with a plot, SO HOW DO YOU READ THE LANG- I began with a late-summer menu from tified to indicate that the courses all conflict, and characters. uage of menus? Stanford University lin- Restaurant Eugene, where Linton relate to each other. What you won’t find Menus begin with the expressed in- guist Dan Jurafsky, working with a team Hopkins is the chef-proprietor and Chris is extraneous language. We have “egg- tentions of the people who cook and sell from Carnegie Mellon University, entered Edwards is the executive chef. After ex- plant, shell beans, basil.” “Ribeye, cauli- you food, then turn to you to fill in the data from 650,000 menu items and found perimenting with various menu formats flower, hazelnut.” Smith is telling us that meaning. They illustrate, as well as any a strong correlation between language over the years—including the once-pop- he can make these flavors play nice to- form of literature I can think of, Roland and price. Words like “exotic” and “spices” ular vegetable-fish-meat tripartite— gether, but isn’t tipping his hand to the Barthes’ distinction between work and Sraise the price of a dish, as does any Hopkins has settled on a terse single page complex execution or intricate plating text. “While the work is held in the hand,” mention of an ingredient’s provenance. of a dozen or so nightly offerings, divided for which he is known. That will come he wrote, “the text is held in language; Jurafsky et al found that midpriced between starters and entrées. Although as a surprise when the food arrives and it exists only as discourse.” chain restaurants are far more likely to there is a tasting menu option, it is à la the server delivers a verbal script. I find menus written by chefs to be the use mushy “linguistic filler” words like carte, and like most such menus today There are, however, two exceptions. most evocative. The words chefs choose savory, delightful, zesty, rich, tangy, fluffy, justified left on the page. You make the In one, Smith humanizes this menu’s echo their professional pasts, reference juicy, colorful, chunky and moist. This choices and judge each dish on its own. exercise in high culture with a reference their culinary heroes, and find voice in language attempts to conceal the fact that This menu insists on dialogue. What’s to his Grandma Lillian and her potato their own experiences. Menus produced these cheaper dishes lack ingredients of “the best American beef we can find?” bread. In the other, the menu uses a by restaurant groups—often with the help actual value. When you move down the It’s a tacit rejection of the U.S.D.A. single extraneous adjective, noting the of marketing professionals known as food chain from midrange to everyday, grading shorthand and an invitation to “aged duck”—a callout to a technique “menu engineers”—are less appealing to inexpensive restaurants, the menus begin learn more about the Ancient White Park that is fashionable among the nation’s me as a critic and as a diner, but no less to promise real bacon bits, genuine cattle Restaurant Eugene sources from top chefs. Smith’s food is based in the interesting as texts. They can’t help but whipped cream, and fresh spinach, dis- Virginia. Maybe this $92 steak isn’t lessons of home cooking. It’s also in dis- reflect contemporary attitudes toward playing what linguists call “status anxiety.” Prime, but that doesn’t matter. course with the most innovative restau- dining and communicate the ways in Expensive restaurants show no such As you read, you wonder about the rants around the country. which appetite and culture collide on anxiety: The cream comes from a cow. unusual, non-grammatical use of capital- Another tough Atlanta reservation is the plate. If you’re a scientist, you look for sta- ization. Most proper nouns are lower case, Gunshow, where Kevin Gillespie is the Some menus so thoroughly reflect tistical correlation. But if you’re a restau- while many seemingly random words— chef-owner and Joey Ward the executive current fashion they became fast clichés. rant critic, you look for textual clues. Crumb, Tart, and Clay—appear in upper chef. When you take your seat, the busy case. I asked Hopkins. As a Southern chef, page of a menu serves almost as your he told me, he sees himself in discourse boarding pass. This menu is neither à la with guests and with history. As he ex- carte nor tasting, but an unusual hybrid. Menus begin with the EXPRESSED plained it, the weird capitalization came The chefs in Gunshow’s open kitchen from Thomas Jefferson, who thought prepare several orders of each dish in upper case letters should mark the most batches and then personally hawk them INTENTIONS of the people who COOK important “words of intent.” Here, the table to table, like dim sum. The menu, capital letters indicate the most flavorful one per table, serves as a checklist, a ingredients and transformative textures. cheat sheet, and a conversation starter. and SELL YOU FOOD, then turn to you, Finally, why is the farro “mounted with You’ll pass it back and forth with the duck liver”? Even though it sounds a bit chefs and rolling-cart barkeeps, who tick obscene in English, this term comes from off drinks and dishes. At the end of the the diner, to FILL IN THE MEANING. the French monter, as in monter au evening, it comes back stapled to the bill.

Winter 2018 43 Yet with all the show and tell, the meals changed from banquets, where Menus at even the most FORWARD- Gunshow menu demands a read. The so- various dishes covered tabletops and called “sandfire” listed with the clam dish guests served themselves; to meals served is really samphire—or sea beans, a salty in courses, with dishes plated in the THINKING Southern restaurants still USE succulent that grows by the ocean. The kitchen or on gueridons and served in misspelling is an inside joke that arose in individual portions to guests. the kitchen; the chef shares it to bring you Just like at Gunshow, guests consulted NOSTALGIC LANGUAGE to establish into the process, beyond the transparen- an abbreviated, printed cheat sheet to see cy of the open kitchen. I also note the use what was coming. The word for these of quotation marks around the mint jelly small lists came into English through their country-cooking bona fides. served with lamb. Quotes often indicate French from the Latin minūtus, the same a modernist technique thumbing its nose root word for minute, minute (pronounced at an outdated but still-beloved cliché. my-NYUT), minutiae and the short and preparations to both classic and in- but wonder if it correlates to the popu- Sure enough, this quote-unquote mint musical composition called a minuet. vented dishes, American menus were larity of Gone with the Wind, released as jelly is an aerated mint fluid gel. These meals, not small by any means, plainspoken and unpoetic. I saw both in a blockbuster film in 1939. It seems that Though the menu at Gunshow bounces were often as elaborate as the most in- a robust menu from Portola-Louvre in mere mention of the word “Southern” from Brazil to Thailand for inspiration, it sufferably long tasting menu you’ve ever San Francisco in 1913, which served presents an excuse to engage in racial speaks the vernacular of modern, season- sat through, only with larger portions. minced turkey in cream with poached stereotyping. Perhaps the 1954 Brown vs. al Southern cuisine with a pronounced The French, in their Cartesian way, de- eggs as well as sand dabs meunière. the Board of Education decision also gave accent. Ingredients associated with the veloped names and language for the “Fresh California Vegetables” included fuel to this trend. South—buttermilk, peanuts, muscadines— ordering of courses. I noticed an unusual cauliflower, artichokes, and eggplant. As some American menu writers suc- give it a sense of place as much as the vestige of this practice in a menu reprint- Stewed tomatoes, asparagus, okra, and cumed to their worst instincts, others set repeated use of the word local. The “warm ed in the book Menu Design in America. corn, were listed under “canned vegeta- about elevating the vernacular. The old-fashioned banana pudding” is like It detailed a copious feast prepared for bles.” (It makes me think that with opening of The Four Seasons in New “Grandma Lillian’s potato bread” at Sta- Andrew Johnson at the Louisville Hotel today’s obsession with conservas—the York in 1959 was not only a triumph of plehouse. Gillespie and Ward employ soon after he succeeded Lincoln as Pres- Spanish word for tinned seafood—artis- urban architecture, it was a game changer nostalgic, even somewhat hackneyed ident. What, I wondered, were “hot re- anal canned veggies may stage a come- for American menu design and language. language to establish country-cooking lieves”? It was the relevé, or “remove,” back.) Another bit of prototypical Cali- The Four Seasons discovered a spare, bona fides. Without this conceit, upscale which came to the table after it had been fornian menu language: potatoes got appetizing poetry in the plain language Southern cooking loses its bearings and cleared of the fish course. Therelevé was nearby place names—Salinas, Saratoga— of American restaurant menus. Like the its sense of purpose, becoming a farcical followed by the entrance to the meal, or to localize the menu. best American menus today, it drew facsimile of itself. (“Fancy” is often a de- the entrée, which was then followed by In the 1940s and 1950s, so-called broadly from international influences rogatory descriptor in the region.) The the meal’s centerpiece, the roast. (These Southern restaurants enjoyed a wave of and puts a primacy on seasonal, local use of French words like macaire and jus, coursed meals were plotted like a Henry popularity across the country. Menus ingredients. It still reads beautifully. on the other hand, demonstrates ground- James novel, with the climactic moment from the period codified many typically Consider these dishes: tiny shrimps in ing in classic French technique, still the halfway through and the denouement American dishes, such as fried chicken shoyu, french fried; chicken cream soup root syntax of nearly all ambitious restau- quite lengthy.) and barbecue pork, as Southern. They with new oats; Amish ham steak with rant cooking. Szechuan peppercorns dot At some point, English speakers decided also engaged in the worst kind of racial apricot dumpling; beefsteak tomatoes the chocolate mousse dessert. More on that by the time they reached the entrée stereotyping. Images of mammies and carved at table; prosciutto with ripe figs; that later. it was the de facto main course, while the men who bore more than a little resem- mint-roasted epaulet of baby lamb, and French kept its intended meaning as a blance to Uncle Remus appeared on something called the queen’s grouse with WHILE THE STYLE OF SERVICE AND precursor to the main event. This has menus as far away as Los Angeles. White blackberry beignets. use of the menu at Gunshow may seem created linguistic confusion ever since. diners at these restaurants could feel The postwar years saw the influx of the a paradigm shifter, it hearkens to the By the turn of the twentieth century, superior to Southerners yet also enjoy “le” and “la” restaurants as Americans origin of the modern menu. We’re not an American menu vernacular had begun the benefits of the unequal power struc- began to appreciate how much better the looking that far back: It wasn’t until the to develop. While European menus of ture through the nostalgia hiding just French ate. Television chef and cook- mid-nineteenth century that formal the period tended to assign proper names beneath the folksy surface. I can’t help book author Julia Child, and first lady W44 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 45 Jacqueline Kennedy did much to popu- At. Umque et fugiae. Aboremo larize French cuisine as culturally aspi- rational and a means to improve quality odiscimus vellupturia dolupti of life. My parents for years joked about odit offic temolecae. Nemodissi what a little snob I had become when I asked to have my sixth birthday in 1967 voluptatem qui que nus at Chez Marcel, the little French restau- doluptum veliquatur rem rant in our suburb of Washington, D.C. (I velluptate com et ad loved escargot, but I think what I really loved was the fresh garlic and real butter.) Henri Soulé opened La Côte Basque in New York in the late 1950s. Soon, many restaurants wrote their menus in French. French even began showing up on inexpensive menus as a marker of class. Phrases like du jour lasted long past their expiration date. French menus looked classy, and they carried all sorts of encoded information thanks to the the rigidity of French cuisine. Soulé’s guests soon learned that sole Véronique came in a sauce of enriched stock and peeled white grapes, and that a blanquette was a creamed veal stew with carrots. Just a few English words appeared on the La Côte Basque menu: striped bass, a North American species; and grapefruit. Perhaps interpreted canonical dishes; they migrate to a less expensive neighbor- with horseradish slaw, fries and pickled the notion of eating half a grapefruit as created new gustatory delights. As menu hood. But in 1980s Denver, we had to okra tartar sauce” is a pretty straightfor- an appetizer was so repugnant to the writers, they gave up on the terse, plain- reassure guests at the most expensive ward dish if you think about it, but the chef’s French sensibility that he didn’t spoken style associated with American restaurant in town that we were indeed “new South” language promises a dis- want to dignify it with a translation. food and let their purple prose flags fly. using imported cheese. (We weren’t.) tinctive personality and an exceptional The French menu situation escalated Action-packed descriptions noted the By the 1990s and 2000s, creative, in- rather than typical fried fish meal. to the point that the firebrandNew York preparation of dishes, bringing the diner dividualistic fare in restaurants became I can’t remember if I liked that dish or magazine restaurant critic Gael Greene into the sybaritic space of the kitchen. the norm rather than the exception. not as a critic. But if I didn’t, you can bet took up arms in a 1969 review of La Car- I cooked at Cafe Giovanni in Denver Chefs signaled their command of local I would have complained that all the avelle. “I cannot imagine any Frenchman from 1988 to 1990. Our menu offered such flavors, creative innovations and values fancy-sounding seasoning was lipstick walking into a Paris restaurant and wres- dishes as “tender veal sweetbreads sim- as a cook with what they called the “plate on a pig. Perhaps sensing the problems tling docilely with a menu in untranslat- mered in a rich brown sauce with fresh set” and diners called the “garnishes.” with interchangeable plate sets, chefs ed English,” she wrote. “But for masoch- mushrooms” and “an individual rack of There might be a grilled pork chop or a began dropping the word “with.” I pulled ists…what joy! We fake it. Order “le sirloin spring lamb, marinated and oven roasted pan-roasted fillet of grouper, but all the from my collection a 2005 menu from steak” or anything we happen to recog- with herbs and spices.” Even simple rest of the stuff on your plate—the Aria in Atlanta, where Gerry Klaskala was nize. Accept whatever mysterious con- dishes got the swoony prose, such as “with”—told you where you were and and is chef. The garnishes seemed intrin- coction appears before us.” In the 1970s, “tender homemade egg pasta tossed in who the chef was. sic to the primary ingredients. The Aria French began disappearing from menus. a rich sauce of cream, egg, butter, and I kept a menu from Atlanta’s South menu dispatched with most adjectives In the 1970s and 1980s, American chefs imported cheeses, dusted with fresh City Kitchen in 2004, when Jay Swift (other than “feathery” to describe potato became less concerned with classic ground black pepper.” It was the kind of was chef. Today, it reads as a prime cakes) and assumed the diner’s familiar- culinary repertoires. They no longer menu language that would eventually “with” text. Crispy fried Carolina trout ity with such ingredients as ponzu.

46 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 47 48 southernfoodways.org48 the Atlanta Journal-Constitution foreighteenyears . John Kessler isadiningcolumnist forChicagoMagazine. He wasafoodwriterat indigenous combining manner, this in menu Mexican modern her Yorkwrites Chef Daniela Soto-Innes of Cosme in New themselves. express to use chefs today’s that poetry spiky a creates language this byproduct, a As whole. unified a as set: The ingredients must work together menu sounds the death knell for the plate a know.Such don’t us like people food smarty-pants even which of many ents, emerged—the oft-dreaded list of ingredi- through thismenutobliss. pathways various the telegraphing courage dialogue with the servers while of the four courses. The idea was to en- each for choices four the ingredientfor primary the only listed that menu grid short-lived a Yorkintroduced New in Park Madison Eleven at Humm Daniel later, year A course. the sweeter the course; and the farther right it appeared, larger the circle, the more substantial the dish on that evening’s tasting menu. The each of descriptions the within placed ecutive chef, circles of varying sizes were ex is AchatzGrant where Alinea, from writing in creative ways. In a 2010 menu have bucked against the syntax of menu waiter, but are the artichoke hearts fresh? me,excuse and wine, for match great a artichokes and mushrooms, which isn’t was delicious; after, it was that dish with YvonneCrabmeat that remember just could you Before, text. this with logue way the reader-eater entered into a dia- change was subtle but significant in the more American descriptive format. The the of favormanner—in French the in menu format—a terse list of named dishes longstanding its dropped Orleans New American menus still largely look like this. In recent years, a new menu syntax has In this decade, forward-thinking chefs mid-2000s,the Galatoire’sevenIn in - and thattellsastory. late dessert at Gunshow? That’s conflict, the Sichuan peppercorns on the choco Rememberthemselves. dishes the than character. As for conflict, look no further table.American the That’sto bring will they embrace, to the future of what they to the present of the multivalent culture people, ancestral their of past the from voyage a best, its journey,at their and expression,creative for one quest their hubris, of kind a be to as evident so ego their protagonist: as chef the of Think ry text, menus do present actual drama. regional cuisine. dishes tell the story of America’s greatest the lets then and descent, African of people the of perspective the from tive to North America.” It defines the narra- the across forced were Africans humble beginnings embarked when “ sentence: powerful this with begins itself which preamble, a with begins chef, executive is Jordan at JuneBaby in Seattle, where Edouardo they are stories told in prose. The menu regardliteratureas menus as inasmuch might We them. within meaning of layers the elucidate and explore to and them off order to eaters and readers as of themenu,itmesseswithmeter. tone the with mess guac does only Not space, in the bottom corner of the page. white of sea a past dishes, other all of places the word far away from her listing she can’t customers asking for guacamole. While her hand to an obvious frustration with peanuts.”macha, salsa tostada, tips She “Abalone as descriptors terse such with p’ak”“ha’sikil like words culinary Even without such explicit explanato us to up is it but menus, write Chefs were taken from their home and not offer this crowd pleaser, she ’s food’s Southern middle passage middle West West - -

Oriana Koren Parsing the SouthernCogito Therefore We Yam by We Eat, ZANDRIA F. ROBINSON The Seed, the Spirit, and the a question of the spirit, and an important Southern Cogito one in the context of impending climate I find this year’s theme of reading food— doom; and whence, which is a question or reading, being, and food—to be apt for this moment. randall kenan opened the sym- of origins. We think, therefore we yam. posium with “I Yam,” an analysis of We read, therefore we yam. We eat, Because if the 2018 UN Climate Change report is to be be- chapter thirteen of Ralph Ellison’s In- therefore we yam. We want to do some lieved (and I know there are a couple of non-believers), then visible Man, in which the protagonist has spirit science and to investigate where- a Southern existential revolution. On a fore and whence we yam. This is how we reading and thinking about food is about all we’ll be doing Harlem street in winter, he buys a won- begin to know who we yam in relation in a decade without some significant action. As we say here, drously sweet, hot, syrupy, steaming yam to others. there are many Souths. South Memphis and the South Side from a street vendor, who completes the If thinking is being, then we yam yam with a bit of butter. The protagonist because we must eat. And sometimes, of Chicago. And here in these southernmost of the southern eats the yam walking down the street, when we are privileged to eat, we want United States, we say the Deep South. There are the south- and the first taste, as well as the freedom to do so beautifully, at whatever human of eating it in the street, makes him and natural cost, until the earth says, “no ern portions of other countries and the so-called southern homesick for the South. At this joy, this more,” or the food or people cargo that portion of the world, the Global South. Let us refuse to look transformation, his internal critic steps comes here says, “no more.” If eating is away, look away, from any of these Souths. Instead, let us in, declaring as much to his antagonist being, then we yam because we are Bledsoe as to himself, “You’re a shame- Southerners. This is an identity that hold them together and look forwards and backwards, less chitterling eater!” But the yam, its marks us and holds us, that some before through the Southern, American, and global histories and goodness, its taste of home, emboldens us died for, that many others before us— the protagonist and simultaneously drug out of jails and murdered, lynched presents explored at the Fall Symposium, and the near-fu- makes him realize that he has denied by mobs or plowed down by white su- tures, or future-presents, they gesture towards. himself the fruits and practices of the premacists in Charlottesville—have been South—home, identity, and being—out murdered for. As bell hooks instructs, we This year the Symposium brought to- Nigerian Americans, and Caribbean of fear of upsetting racist and classist “eat the other,” and a lot of times each gether two of staples of Southern Americans—sometimes known as social decorum. He responds to that in- other, therefore we yam. Studies—food as subject and literature/ “Southerners, too,” have been doing the ternal critic in the most unapologetical- If reading is being, then we yam text as the content holder—to achieve work of making the region capacious ly Southern Black way: “They’re my because we imagine that there is more, two aims. The first aim was to highlight enough for a future that can hold and birthmark. I yam what I am!” He am. He that there can be more, for everyone. We those multiple Souths and their differ- keep both our both humanity and our yam. We yam, too. imagine that there is a future that is ences and to continually expand our planet. Some of that work is now being Let’s take this notion of being, or better than the one we’ve written for understanding of every bit of this region. “discovered” and “assimilated” into that yamming, back to the French philosopher ourselves. Reading is, in fact, the great White Southerners have, mostly for the great Southern pot. René Descartes1 and call it the Southern democratizer. By “reading,” I mean a sake of survival, gradually allowed an The second, perhaps more implicit, aim Cogito: We think, therefore we yam. We wide range of consumption practices for understanding of difference in the region, was to demonstrate what makes events eat, therefore we yam. We read, there- a wide range of texts, practices for which which means more hands on deck to like the Southern Foodways Symposium fore, we yam. At the risk of further cen- every participant need not be literate in defend our borders, including Oklahoma continually necessary. That weekend’s tering the self (sorry not sorry, postmod- the traditional sense. Reading is the thing and west Texas and southern Florida, talks and meals and conversations ernists), we then might ask the that allows us as Southerners to be through a focus on what brings us to- achieved this by revealing how the some- fundamental questions that prefigure beyond ourselves, to be-with-others, to gether. “Other” Southerners, from indig- times-unwieldy interdisciplinary field of our Southern being: wherefore, which is be in community and conversation with enous Americans to enslaved Africans Southern Studies, a field seemingly and their black American descendants, bounded only by geography, coheres. 1 We will recall one of Descartes’ most widely cited philosophical contributions, “Cogito, to the range of immigrant groups that Southern difference—across race, gender, ergo sum,” typically translated to “I think, therefore I am.” The concept is often called “the have transformed the South for the power, topography, and geography—is an Cogito” for short. Although his conception of thinking as a determining factor for better—the Vietnamese, the Chinese, intellectual and disciplinary strength, and existence or being has been roundly and rightly challenged, it nevertheless serves as a Indian Americans, Mexican Americans, there is room under the tent. common starting point for thinking about being in the West.

50 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 51 one another, to bridge gaps in the facile line between seed and spirit. Hospitality and Hunger; narrator has come home, perhaps for the ways of diversity and inclusion as well Seeds contain origins and origin or Reading Food on the umpteenth time, at 5 o’clock in the as to break power structures in the more stories. What are we doing here? Our A and B Sides morning. The woman, his lover, greets back-breaking ways of resistance, beginnings as Southerners, our seeds and him not with a query about where he has protest, and revolution. To borrow more their specificity, seem to matter very “welcome!” been, but, “Are you hungry? Did you eat?” from continental philosophy, rather much to us, so much so that we hurt each “Come on in, y’all!” She takes his coat and hat and smiles, than Martin Heidegger’s notion of being other over our identities, which refer- “Here’s a bite or three or four.” her desire to care and to feed, in his pa- and time (where an individual’s being ence our respective power levels in the “You thirsty? Here’s some water.” triarchal delirium, greater than her anger cannot be understood without attention social hierarchy. The seeds of plants feed “HEEEEEY, how you doing?” at his perpetual betrayal. But the narra- to temporality and history), we South- us so we can make seeds of people who Hospitality is central to our identities tor tells us in the chorus, “It’s a thin line erners, through attentive reading, might will be hospitable to us not just when we as Southerners, and we especially like to between love and hate.” It is a signal that think of being and food—where we are at our most dire but always, so that demonstrate this with food. That was something other than hospitality, some- cannot understand our being as South- we may always know care and never evident in our considerations of reading thing more sinister, might be afoot. In erners without attention to food as a hunger for it. Southern food at the Fall Symposium. the second verse, the narrator reveals fundamental structural principle of On the other side of our being, opposite There were welcome tables from Zora he’s telling us this story from the hospi- Southern identity and being. Or further of origins, are endings. At any given time, Neale Hurston to Alice Walker, Harlem tal bed, bandaged from feet to head, and to a more contemporary note of exis- as we await and face our inevitable ends to Georgia, all the way to Yunnan prov- suggests that this smiling, feeding, hos- tential declaration through Southern in these bodies, we are comprised of all ince in China’s south, and back again. In pitable woman has done this to him. He food, we might go to that Memphis of the endings that came before us and her conversation with John Simpkins, says he didn’t think she had the nerve, philosopher Project Pat: “You can call made us. These are the whispers we hear the writer and travel guide Mei Zhang and he warns others about repeatedly me gold mouth, that’s what I said/hey that warn us to go left instead of right, noted that an afternoon greeting in her hurting their partners, saying, “She gone baby, you gone eat your cornbread?” the ones that come to us in dreams and hometown of Dali might be, “have you fool you one day.” (For what it is worth, Then there are the questions of whence remind us of who we are, and the ones eaten?” For Zhang’s family and commu- the B side to “Thin Line Between Love and wherefore we yam. The Southern that help us cross the river when our nity kin, like for Hurston and Walker, and Hate” is a song called “Thigh Spy.” Cogito is flanked on the one side by seeds time here is done. Some call these things and for the mothers, and farmers, and That might indicate what caused some and on the other by spirits. First, we are coincidence or intuition. Others call caretakers, the question functions as a of the A side narrator’s troubles.) the seeds. We arrive, we are born; we them the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit. greeting and an invitation. This might On the Symposium’s “lower frequen- spend our life, our being, figuring out We might just call it spirit, that amalga- be a universal hospitality greeting for cies,” to borrow again from Ellison’s who we yam; and then we go on to, or mation of ancestors passed on that fill us Southerners across the many Souths. If protagonist, there is the B side to hos- back to, spirit, our personal eternity. In from when we are seeds to when we die my children, fifteen and five, wake before pitality, the white-toothed smile of short, being is both about the generation ourselves. me, I come to know their state of being something murderous. Talking about of the material of life, the sustaining and We think, therefore we yam. We read, by asking first if and what they’ve had to the experiences of “other” Southerners, nurturing of it, and the nurturing of the therefore we yam. We eat, therefore we eat. Feeding people can be lovely when and especially immigrants, novelist spirits beyond us. Our being is only a thin yam. Whence and wherefore we yam? labor given freely is labor appreciated. Monique Truong noted that we often We feed, therefore we yam. And we help find ourselves “ravenous in a land of do the dishes afterwards. Hospitality. plenty.” This is about hunger. Truong’s There is a giving here: literary kinship, work asks, who can narrate the Southern generosity of spirit, and of intimacies Cogito, the “we think, therefore we yam,” If reading is being, then we yam that make us feel seen. It is one thing to in the context of the South’s persistent be welcomed. It is another thing to be fear and skepticism of “outsiders,” in because we imagine that there seen, and still another to be rigorously spite of the wonders these folks have is more, that there can be more, cared for and fed. We yam. given the region, and our being, some- Perhaps the most famous use of that times at great cost? There is a slippage for everyone. We imagine that greeting in Black American popular between hospitality and hunger. there is a future better than the culture, albeit with a twist, comes from What makes hospitality possible? one we’ve written for ourselves. The Persuaders’ 1971 soul hit, “Thin Line Hard, inhospitable labor. On farms, as Between Love and Hate.” In it, the environmental justice scholar and

52 Winter 2018 53 we consider both hospitality and hunger managed preparation but also managed in the same lens? And how should we people who could and would end them begin to do it? If one cannot listen or capriciously. This labor, unseen, is made hear, then perhaps the answer is to read visible here, and is an archive of what on the lowest frequencies. we might call today “managing up.” Archives of food production and con- During the symposium, Ashanté Reese sumption are an important tool for and Monica White talked about the holding hospitality and hunger togeth- representation of farm labor in Ava Du- er in the same lens. On hunger, there is Vernay’s television series Queen Sugar. reading about various laboring people They showed us explicit connections and the material effects of exploitation between race, land, and capital and the on their bodies and lives. Capitalism, its struggle to keep hospitable traditions excesses and brutality and fundamental in an unwelcoming world. The Bordelon imbalance, is present in every text, family’s labor, like most labor, is con- sometimes more directly than not. stricted by white supremacist capital- There is modern-day enslavement and ism, and therefore already fraught. significations upon the peculiar insti- Jessica Wilkerson, who spoke of the tution, as in James Hannaham’s novel Foxfire books, offered an archive of an Delicious Foods, where the physical and Appalachian archive that echoed how psychological bloodiness of food, its rot white supremacist capitalism threatens and its promise, and the labor that its poorer, rural skinfolk. The rural tra- brings it to our plates, are on display. ditions, those of family farms, wide There is reading about food in a post- expanses of land, the cooperative before advocate Monica White’s work shows. Putting Hospitality and bellum nation, when social relations the co-op, that constitute so much of At James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods, Hunger on the Same Plate shifted nominally but power relations our Southern Cogito, our memory of or Boots Riley’s Worry Free, or the new hardened, as the University of Alabama’s who we were, whence we came, our factory in Appalachia or the Delta that the hungry are often said to Lupton Collection of African American seeds and roots, and even our wherefore has taken the place of the family farm. have appetites of excess when what is food books, from which Ravi Howard and raison d’être, are in eminent danger At Fred Smith’s FedEx hubs, where the really happening, of course, is depriva- drew his essay, reveals. At hand is the across all of our Souths. package handlers are called pickers. Ex- tion. Deprived of enough to eat, or of question of how those conscripted, Neoliberal power relationships in late ploitation is the other side of hospitality. the beauty of eating. Deprived of the through forcible enslavement and other modernism are globally entangled. The Exploitation enables hospitality. rights to own our bodies. To own our persistently inequitable economic con- transatlantic slave trade and chattel Through the cracked smile of power- labor. Deprived of homes and land and ditions, to serve food and drink not only enslavement, for instance, enabled not ful, segregating hospitality, on the B side, earth. Deprivation. Oppression. A thin things sound different: line. This thin line, the other side of the proverbial game, how the other half “Welcome (unless you are colored or lives, is often invisible to the powerful. undocumented).” When they tell stories of the hospitable “Come on in, y’all (except y’all).” South, it is as if they cannot hold the “Here’s a bite or three or four; I’ve bitten images of hospitality and hunger togeth- It is one thing to be welcomed. into this black woman and chewed her er. Southern Studies scholar Tara into parts.” McPherson calls this flaw the South’s It is another thing to be “You thirsty? Here’s some lead water.” lenticular logic, by which she means that seen, and still another to be “HEEEEEY, how you doing? Don’t tell while we might see lack on one side and rigorously cared for and fed. me. I don’t want to know if it’s been excess on the other, we refuse to ac- #YouToo.” knowledge that, as a power relationship,

Sounds like sweet potatoes. excess creates lack. What happens when Adobe Stock

54 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 55 only the astronomical And there is also the fact of the theft of What Do We Eat from Here? has worshipped freedom more, DuBois growth of Western Kossula, the protagonist of Zora Neale asks in his essay “Of Our Spiritual Striv- wealth but also the Hurston’s Barracoon: The Story of the by way of a less philosophical ings,” than black folks in bondage in a growth of other coun- Last “Black Cargo,” from his homeland Symposium redux, or TL;DR2: land of plenty, black folks who created tries’ markets and and forced enslavement in the United 1. There are many Souths, and the one plenty with their bodies, seeds of plenty, wealth out of Western States. With Valerie Boyd as our guide, we currently inhabit is no bigger than without compensation and with scorn demand. In tandem, the West continued we conjured Alice Walker’s welcome the Souths of our origin places, of our and murder as the reward? And who has to exert its capitalistic and homogeniz- table, her endless selecting of things spirits, and of our being. known more about the power of the ing forces on the people, culture, and from her garden to prepare for visitors 2. Power relationships are unequal and unseen behind the thin line? Of Yoruba art of these rising nations, including who have not even yet presented them- unevenly distributed between and orisha Eleggua who was remembered by India and China. It is why, in his pre- selves. We also recalled the oppression within Souths. the enslaved in the New World as Papa sentation, Naben Ruthnum insisted that of the Bordelon family as they try to 3. To address this, we begin might begin Legba, he who opens the curtain for us; understanding the place of curry in the hold on to their farm in the face of white with the Southern Cogito—we think, we of the Saint Lucian spirits who give and United Kingdom—and its influence on supremacy. We felt the lush communi- read, we eat, therefore we yam. trick and govern; of the ancestors who South Asian writing in the 1980s—ne- ty of hospitality in the Yunnan province; 4. Whence we yam? From seeds, from come to us in blue dreams of fitful sleep; cessitates an engagement with British but we also reckoned with the systemic the earth. of Aretha Franklin, whose voice was a colonial legacies, which are inextricable alienation of South Asian writers in the 5. Wherefore we yam? Because we are promise of hospitality? Who has known from enslavement in the US South and, UK. We fretfully sympathized with the in conversation and service of the spirit, more of these things than the hungry? in turn, the curries we eat in Indian protagonists in Hannaham’s Delicious striving toward a perfect freedom, a uni- So what are we to do? There is plenty. restaurants across the region. Alterna- Foods, enslaved and struggling; and we versal hospitality. Or, if you prefer, we We should never be hungry for things tively, though, what is the broad sweep marveled at the ingenious folks in the are in a bloody simulation of flesh oper- to do. No space for ennui in the end of global systems without the politics Appalachian community that produced ated by twelve-year-old white boys, or times. So we might join Papa Legba and of the quotidian, the near, the kitchen, Foxfire. We must remember that there one being run by dispassionate but evil walk the line, like tricksters on Janelle the local? John Kessler’s discussion of are others who make our being and scientists who are trying to figure out Monae’s black-and-white tightrope, or restaurant menus across the region eating, our being and food, possible. how to make humans better. in the depths of Nina Compton’s food, brought us uncomfortably close to our Or. We could all just die in a climate 6. None of this matters, because even to make ourselves a revolving door—so regional psyches, to our Southern disaster. This makes the Southern Food- though we can overcome capitalism and that hunger becomes something that is Cogitos, to our Delta and Appalachian ways Symposium all the more important, what it tries to do to the spirit, we cannot about wanting to care, care, care and and Piney Woods beings. Kessler pulled because the work herein is an archive. overcome what capitalism has done to give more and not deprivation and ex- back the wizard’s curtain of language, It is, in fact, an archive of an archive. make the earth inhospitable to human- ploitation. So that hospitality extends inviting us to read closely into what There are instructions in these readings ity, at least as we have known it. to everyone on all sides, no matter their words mean and why—because this, too, and talks and meals about how to be, and I’ll stop at 6. You can triple it and think seeds or origins. So that we might do the is a part of who we yam. We think, and how not to be, about who we yam, and of climate change as the mark of the right things, so that we might please our we read menus, therefore we yam. If we about who we were. And those instruc- white supremacist capitalist patriarchal spirits and the spirits. So that we might read enough about ourselves, might we tions overwhelmingly are about how to beast. strive for something more than freedom. learn what this all means, beyond iden- eat, whether canning or pickling or We think (about ourselves and others), tity, food, culture, survival? hunting; or how not to be eaten, by think- there are spirits, who provide we read (novels and archives and There are tables for food and commu- ing quick, sticking, tricking and moving, us the logics, science, and guideposts of menus), we eat (garden veggies, curries, nion, near and far, but there is the when the end of the world comes. No our being. W.E.B. Du Bois’s remix of the canes, hams and fried chicken and hot danger of obliteration. There is Zora matter what happens, if there are folks, German field of geisteswissenschaften, fries). For today, let’s eat because, at least Neale Hurston’s giving, cooking, and and we have left enough of a range of the spirit sciences, instructs us here. Who for now, we yam. Asé. sharing of food, her bringing of meats texts for them to read, they will remem- and watermelon to Kossula and sharing ber us by our being and food, and perhaps Zandria F. Robinson is the author of This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class, and them as he shares his story and being. they will make a better world from it all. Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South and co-author of Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life. A native Memphian, she teaches sociology at 2 Internet parlance for “too long, didn’t read,” the text after which typically serves as a neat Rhodes College. This piece is adapted from her remarks as Symposium Coach at summary of a long-ish Facebook post, Tumblr post, or Twitter thread. the 2018 SFA Fall Symposium.

56 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 57 Trovatore: The Lives of Eugene Walter Performed by Paul Burch & WPA Ballclub Side A Side B BEATS AND BITES , 1. Mardi Gras in Mobile 1. Jean Garrigue performance commissioned by SFA. In 2018, we asked Nashville-based musician 2. Paradise By the Sea (Boy from Mobile) 2. 23rd Field Artillery Punch 3. Watching the Northern Lights with Ragzina Gadzooks 3. When I Was In Rome Paul Burch to compose a song cycle based on the life of the writer, bon vivant, actor, 4. How I Found Paris 4. Boogie Back globetrotter, ﬂ aneur, and eater Eugene Walter (1921–1998). The result was Trovatore:

“[W]hen people ask me where I’m from,” Eugene Walter explained in his 1971 Nothing prepared me for Eugene Walter’s salmon mousse. The Now don’t quote me: this story might not be factual, but it’s true. As a boy, lying on my The Lives of Eugene Walter, which premiered at the Symposium, performed by book, American Cooking: Southern Style, “I’d really like to pull out a banjo or way I remember it, it was shaped like a Bundt cake, smooth as a belly one rainy afternoon on my grandmother’s homemade quilt–covered bed, I recall a lyre, and play and do a shuffle dance, while singing:” seal, so pink it glowed, more like Bakelite than something to eat. watching an interview on public television with Duke Ellington, the erudite bandleader Was I a culinarily sheltered young man? In a way, the country who mixed modern African American rhythms with European formality to make a musical Burch and members of his band, the WPA Ballclub. SFA managing director Melissa Gumbo born and gumbo bred, cooking I knew—my grandmother’s chicken-and-oyster gumbo, brew like no other. I was already a fan of Duke and imagined the members of his Orchestra Tabasco follies fuzz my head. souse with pear relish, and so on—might have seemed like weird (never a band) must represent all of human experience, each of them rescued from the Hall interviewed Burch about his creative process. South is my blood and South my bone delicacies to an outsider. Not to Eugene, of course, eternally both obscurity of working kitchens or playing hotel lobbies and brought together on the So haply formed on pork and pone. insider and outsider, embracer of breezes from every direction. bandstand as a carefully orchestrated banquet. Incan, African move in me. For special occasions Eugene could scrape together enough Just as a wild herb or funky spice might ‘make’ a dish, perhaps that horn player or that clarinetist wasn’t the best to be found, but they were able to excel, where more You say: “South? Where can it be?” resources to really put on the dog (I’m not sure he, as a lifelong cat learned players might otherwise doze off, and so Duke had to have them to achieve Chewing my sugar cane, I repeat: lover, would appreciate the phrase; I did, however, detect some musical harmony. If one could eavesdrop on that group—streaking through the night in When you wrote Trovatore, how to step far back and try to see what he “Why, in all we like to cook and eat.” affection when he described the nuns who had educated him as smelling like “wet Collie dogs”), but most often, when I think of him, their private Pullman car-—their conversations might be like, well, a Fellini film with a bit part played by Eugene Walter. You might hear Wit and Charm playing bridge, Fear and In July of 1999, fifty Southerners came together to found the Southern a very different meal comes to mind. left out. In his oral biography Milking the Loathing planning a crime, and Wistful and Lonesome sitting across from one another, TROVATORE: THE LIVES OF EUGENE WALTER & WPA Paul Burch Ballclub much of your focus was on Eugene Foodways Alliance and imagine courses of work from oral history campaigns Eugene had invited me to lunch. He didn’t come to the door, so I kept knocking. When he finally appeared, I realized I had woken each humming their own tune, and dreaming of the one that got away. Only together to graduate classes. Norma Jean Darden was in that number. Frank Stitt, too. might they achieve ineffable beauty. Anyway, so there I was, and there was Ellington in him from his nap, a huge taboo. I was surprised when he invited Walter (his life, his story) and how Moon [as told to Katherine Clark], there Eugene Walter did not gather at the table that day in Birmingham, Alabama. wavy black and white, answering a question about his origins: me in, though he had utterly forgotten our appointment and there (He had passed the year before.) But his ideas animated our discussions. “Well, my Daddy was rich. My Mama was good lookin’. They made sure my feet never were no groceries. Eugene said we’d make do. Like many artists, When conversations about the future of Southern food began in earnest, touched the ground. Then one day, someone said, ‘Hey Duke, come over here...’ and so he was broke in his final years. What he had was a couple of onions. much on the music you were is one glaring omission about his life in his voice rang clarion. During a 1992 conference at Seaside, Florida, an event I did and then someone else said, ‘Psst, hey Duke, come check this out...’ and off I went. that was a precursor to our own Southern Foodways Symposium, Eugene Eugene peeled the onions, otherwise leaving them whole. He And now here I am.” gave an interview from bed, in which he spoke about the need for archival decorated their top halves with ketchup and gave them a leisurely For several months I’ve thought about Eugene Walter, the subject of this album. You creating? that Eugene never discusses the most resources, the ways that food was a humanities concern, and how students of baking in the oven. might think of the grooves as the lines in Eugene’s palm. As the needle vibrates and food need to read and speak foreign languages and read and know ancient I interrupt myself for a moment. One of my least favorite aspects turns the electrical impulses into sound waves, imagine your own fortunes realized and history. of Eugene lore is the recurrence of a certain kind of winking talking paths not taken. See him as I have: a quintessential 20th Century American character important thing in life itself: loving Listen to this album and you’ll hear snippets from those bedside reveries, head—a winking head—who, while putatively celebrating Eugene, furiously fearless, sensitive, and ingenious, a person who believed Luck and Fortune as captured by the late documentarian (and SFA founder) Al Clayton, now passes him off as a wacky fantasist whose stories must be taken ever-present spirits waiting to be summoned and put to work. And like Duke, try to see What comes ﬁ rst: word or music? I another human being. To be loved and remixed by Paul Burch and crew. You will also hear Eugene declare that the with a grain of salt. In my experience, the crazier the story sounded, Eugene as beyond category. South is “the angel’s rocket base and the devil’s listening post.” the more likely it was true. For many years I was guilty of assuming Some describe Eugene as a “renaissance man,” a rescuer of Goosebury, Ajowan, Eugene believed that food was a cultural process, worthy of observation that Eugene wasn’t really in The Pink Panther, as he had casually and the beerburger recipe from his cousin’s restaurant Schimpf’s on Dauphin Street in haven’t a clue. And any songwriter who to love in return—what else is there? study, and reflection. “He wasn’t a capital F food writer,” the late Michael mentioned one day. I had seen it a number of times. Wouldn’t I 1920s Mobile. However, I think Eugene would scoff at the term, as he would attempts by Batterberry, a founding editor of Food Arts magazine and a longtime friend have noticed? I saw it again after his claim. I watched closely this Northern cooks to reduce Southern cuisine to shrimp and grits or fried green tomatoes. of Eugene’s, once told me. “He didn’t divorce his food writing from his life, or time, and Eugene wasn’t in it. Such a term is too easy, too broad and redundant. For isn’t the American character one might tell you otherwise is spinning a To that end, the only person who dies for that matter from his other writing. His love of food, his deep and classical Cut to the future: 2009. I was sitting on the couch, reading, TCM of perpetual renaissance? Are we not a twined collective of African, European, Central reserve of knowledge, figured in everything that he did…” on for some background noise. Suddenly I was startled by Eugene’s American, and West Indian influences that only a bored fool would describe without tall tale. The most honest writers I know in Milking the Moon is the poet Jean At various points, Eugene worked as a novelist, poet, essayist, artist, lyricist, distinctive voice saying, “But it’s not midnight yet.” I dropped my tasting? I do think Eugene would be satisfied with being called “beyond category,” which actor, designer, translator, humorist, botanist, and marionetteer. He also book. There he was, in The Pink Panther. He had two more lines. also is an apt description of the South, where Cruelty and Chivalry might ride the same sketched. One of his illustrations from the 1990s, when the Moral Majority All right. So as we took our forks and knives and carved up our horse to hell. would rather do anything than write a Garrigue. In my mind, the omission of flowered, depicted an aristocratic lady wearing a purple and gold striped skirt, onions, Eugene told me that it was very similar to a dish eaten in Trovatore: The Lives of Eugene Walter chronicles Eugene’s travels from Mobile, where her hand resting on an oversized fork like a scepter. The caption read: “The ancient Egypt. I savored every bite as he wove his spell around it. he was born; to the Aleutian Islands, where he served during World War II; to Paris in the Devil’s dear Grandmother pondering what menu to serve when she invites Onions baked with ketchup seemed special. late 1940s, where he joined the staff of George Plimpton’s literary journal, the Paris Review; song. John Prine once said he’d rather Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jesse Helms to dine in Hell with Hitler and To this day, I have considered it the only time Eugene told me on to Rome, where he made a living as an actor and script translator for Fellini; and finally Mussolini.” something that wasn’t true, but I appreciated it all the more for back to Mobile where, as Folly, he chased Death around the city’s decaying columns. walk across a crowded highway for a cold Throughout his life, Eugene crafted narratives of the places he claimed. its imagination, kindness, dignity, and triumph over hunger of Eugene was a voluminous writer. Though he is rarely obscure, he is much like Folly, First Mobile, then Paris and Rome, then Mobile again. His hometown was a every kind. As I typed these words, I took out—in the spirit of due always in motion, not to be caught. His loves, his motivations, his fears, and his desires character, a constant presence. “Down in Mobile they’re all crazy,” he wrote diligence—my Oxford Companion to Food and looked up “onion.” are none of your damned business. What would he think of the horn and violin band hot dog than try to write a song. The nature of art in the novel An Untidy Pilgrim, “because the Gulf Coast is the kingdom of Right away we’re in ancient Egypt, where onions “constantly on “Mardi Gras in Mobile”? Would he recognize the Mobile of his youth in “Paradise by monkeys, the land of clowns, ghosts and musicians, and Mobile is sweet appeared” in “tomb paintings, inscriptions and documents…large, the Sea”? When “Watching the Northern Lights with Ragzina Gadzooks” (his contraband As for my process, in general, some- lunacy’s county seat.” white, and mild,” just like the ones we ate that day. But were they wartime puppy), would he rather hear silence? Would he weep again for “Jean Garrigue,” is that the more SFA tells stories about this region in ways that complicate understandings ever doused in an ancient Egyptian form of ketchup? The book the like-minded friend and poet who stands out in Eugene’s oral autobiography Milking and engender conversations. We rethink and reframe the South and shine doesn’t say. All I know is Eugene never lied. the Moon, written with Katherine Clark, as the one friend whose death stops him in his times I write a lyric (occasionally an bright lights on the likes of Eugene Walter. When the Cockayne Fund stepped — Jack Pendarvis tracks? Did I get the recipe correct for his “23rd Field Artillery Punch” or did he leave in to support SFA performance art commissions, this sort of scene-by-scene something out? Would he dance to “When I Was In Rome” and imagine times when, like vivid the character, narrative of an important but comparably unheralded life is just what we Cleopatra, he was occasionally nude? Does “Boogie Back” cast a cool-enough eye on life, entire song top to bottom) with only a aimed to introduce to the world. death, and the South’s vanishing culinary history? Perhaps Eugene would find this record John Egerton, the author and SFA founder, got it right when he said of to be utter nonsense. But I think he would recognize how the effort to honor a life lived Eugene: “He is the once and future king of cookery writers.” And so, let us with fervor, and to celebrate the hints and pinches that flavor such a life, could raise the bare rhythm in mind. Sometimes I can and the closer you hail the king. All hail Eugene, wrangler of monkeys, jouster of Falwell and consciousness of others and inspire them to call Luck and Fortune to the table. He might Robertson and Helms, muse of kitchens. say that such a strange enterprise as this, could indeed “satisfy a long-felt want.” ‘hear’ the music in my imagination. Other — John T Edge — Paul Burch adhere to the facts, Presented by Paul Burch & WPA Ballclub All songs by Burch/Borrowed & Broke Music, BMI except Eugene Walter recorded by Al Clayton, Seaside, FL, 1992 times, even two lines will evoke a scene Commissioned by the Southern Foodways Alliance “Mardi Gras in Mobile” and “Paradise by the Sea” (Lyrics by Burch, To learn more about Eugene, read Milking the Moon by Katherine Clark Underwritten by the Cockayne Fund Music by Burch/DG Crouch Music, BMI) In the Winner’s Circle I’ve never imagined until that moment. the more people Premiered October 13, 2018, at the 21st Southern Foodways Featuring the WPA Ballclub Don Goodman, Eliza Brown, Melissa Hall, Afton Thomas, Meg & Henry, Symposium, Oxford, MS Paul Burch | Guitar, Voice, Piano (“Paradise”), Drums (“Boogie Back”) Natasha Senjanovic (Italian: “23rd Field Artillery Punch”), Martha & Production Supervision by Paul Burch & Dennis Crouch Dennis Crouch | Upright Bass Edward, and WPA Ballclub In some ways, putting Eugene’s life to

GLIDER LTD 011 will see themselves Recorded & Balanced by PB at Pan American Sound, Nashville, TN Justin Amaral | Drums Mastered by Eric Conn & Don Cobb at Independent Mastering Heather Moulder | Piano music was easy since Eugene lived in A Production of the WPA Corps of Engineers Fats Kaplin | Violin, Hawaiian Steel O2018 Paul Burch o Art Direction, design, and photo tint by Susan Archie Jen Gunderman | Accordion, Harmonium, Piano (“Boogie Back”) 2018 Glider Ltd & Southern Foodways Alliance in that story. Squiggle drawings courtesy the Estate of Eugene Walter Chloe Feoranzo | Tenor Sax, Clarinet Glider Ltd. 011 All Rights Reserved locales that are known for very specifi c Cover Photo by Joyce Fay (1987) kinds of sounds—at least during the times he lived there. For this album, I love and the admission of the death of a fi rst daydreamed about the places I woman, fellow writer, and colleague, told wanted to write about and imagined for me Jean was an important person in each a kind of cliché sonic curtain. For Eugene’s life. Whether they had an actual instance, a song about Eugene’s days in romance I can’t be sure. But I chose to , BEHIND Paris in the late 1940s and early 50s make the song “Jean Garrigue” refl ect through Mexico for a week as a guide for (during the time Paris was still rationing their closeness, a closeness I’ve seen and a Los Angeles Times–organized culinary THE MUSIC food and gasoline) I thought ought to have felt between other writers and mu- tour. Our group of mostly middle-aged have accordion, fast guitar, a loping jazz sicians. Knowing Eugene to be a sensitive white Angelenos sampled street food in Putting life to song, and song to life beat, and perhaps violin. person, it did not seem like coincidence Mexico City, took cooking classes in the AS TOLD TO MELISSA HALL BY PAUL BURCH But the music is only half the trouble. to me that he should omit love and sex colonial city of Puebla, and ate our weight There were challenges to writing about in his otherwise detailed story, but in mole and handmade tortillas in the a writer. Eugene was quite detailed and include the death of the most divine and southern state of Oaxaca. Album cover designed by Susan Archie; photo by Joyce Fay Joyce photo by Archie; Susan designed by cover Album articulate in his recollections. So I had mysterious Jean Garrigue.

58 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 59 Another thing that writers will never you adhere to the facts, the nature of the Paradise By the Sea admit to is that some of the best moments facts, and how those facts emerged from (Mobile Before the War) in a recording—moments that seem to the goo of experience, more and more (Words by Burch, Music by “make” a performance—often come from people will see themselves in that singu- Burch & Dennis Crouch) accidents, innocent miscommunication, lar story. Maybe Eugene’s voice is a kind and the impossible lucky breaks that of mask. And a mask, after all, often says Down in Mobile We’re all crazy come from just stepping up to the mi- more about the person interpreting the The County Seat of Lunacy crophone and hoping for the best. In mask than the person who is wearing it. Home to Carnival, Cotton other words, showing up—the secret, it And the little Fire Ant seems, to success. So what comes first, “How I Found Paris” is my favorite A man can be a woman words or music? The answer is yes. song on the album. I think it’s your And a woman can be a man playfulness with the word “found” In Mobile Does creating a song set about a real that speaks to me. Do you have a When I was a boy in Mobile person inspire creativity or hamper favorite song (or two) on the album? creativity? Eugene Walter’s voice, What speaks to you in that song? Down in Mobile which is heard on the album, feels Before the war Life was quiet and all you heard both evocative and at times stifling Even though none of the songs would French, Dutch, and Portuguese because of its singularity. have been written without first being The air smelled like oysters asked to consider Eugene’s story, for me And fresh cut steel The advantage to writing about someone each song on Trovatore is linked to a real is that you don’t have to make any- person I know and for whom I’m thankful. Playing in the cool Under the house thing up! Real life is always stranger, Since the record was finished, pack- I’d hear porch gossip all around sexier, more outlandish, and downright aged, sealed, and delivered, the album Who died last night perfectly stupid in the best ways than has come to represent something else all Who got soused most anyone else’s cold imagination. together. My experience at SFA, the Who went out a lover If you find Eugene’s voice stifling, that warm reception the album received, and And came home a spouse may be because that kind of voice tends the opportunities and friendships that Down by the docks to evoke in us the image of a now-gone came as a result of the recording and the My granddad brought in era of Southern (male) genteel politeness concert, are all tied together now. Food from around the world that often disguised a haughty Writing the tune is a very private kind Bananas, mangoes, guava, and plantains indifference—or downright hostility— of happening, whereas recording a song If he caught a deep sea crab for supper Why he’d call it a day toward anything that challenged one’s is something I share with my favorite orthodoxy. I think Eugene was an ex- musicians. My sense of accomplishment The bordellos kept the sailors traordinary person. But one could argue primarily comes from writing something And the senators cool he used his very differentness (as an artist good enough that these fine musicians To drink their moonshine and play games and as a man attracted to men and can, with just a small bit of direction and of chance Every neighborhood a little melody women) as a cloak with which he smug- encouragement, make these stories seem Of colonial days of gled his way through otherwise compro- real and better than I imagined. I’m Great Britain, Spain, and France mising situations. That kind of grateful. It was made with love, and I self-awareness, a fear of verbal and social hope it is received that way. Even if The Mobile I knew traps, does take its toll. Eugene wouldn’t have liked it, I think he Before the war was a paradise by the sea Cat and Monkey kind of folks The nature of art, of course, is that the would have thought the effort no less Free spirits like me more vivid the individual and the closer than gallant. What America might have been C’est la vie SFA thanks the Cockayne Fund for underwriting the writing, production, recording, and performance of Trovatore. Type this link into your browser to listen at home: Mobile When I was a boy in Mobile https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NoMALPgeDdpPwy6YUquXhoVf-gZvs9sJ

60 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 61 ORAL HISTORY ’ study at Vanderbilt, but her high school principal in Birmingham decided it wasn’t the right place for her and refused Jo Ellen O’Hara’s to send in the application. So she went to the University of Alabama instead. editors at The O’Hara didn’t want to major in home Birmingham News economics. Home ec was expected of a college woman in the 1950s. Not just in assigned her Alabama, not just in the South, but pretty the pen name “Sue MEET much everywhere women had the Scattergood.” audacity to matriculate. Then she found journalism and the university yearbook, “You’re going to get JO ELLEN O’HARA The Corolla, where she excelled. Ms. married in two years Even when she was Sue Scattergood, O’Hara was elected the fi rst female editor and you’ll leave,” she’s always been herself in a nonwar year of The Corolla. She was honored as the outstanding graduate of they reasoned. BY ANNEMARIE ANDERSON AND MELISSA HALL her class in journalism, even though she They were wrong. was not a journalism major. She began her newspaper career at The Birmingham News in 1965 on the federal court beat. The job paid $70 a week. O’Hara loved the job and was thrilled O’Hara became the food editor of The that she never had to work as a cosmet- Birmingham News in 1965. Though she ics saleswoman in a downtown depart- initially had no interest in covering food, ment store—the post-college career path she grew to love it. The pen name “Sue for many of her classmates. Scattergood” was chosen for her because Jo Ellen O’Hara was a writer. A good her editors said, “Well, you’re going to get one. And her home economics major was married in two years and you’ll leave and her secret. Until it wasn’t. we’ll be stuck with a no-name food editor.” She recalls, “After a couple of years O’Hara drew attention to gender equity the editor, who was one of these people during her tenure at The Birmingham you never say no to, he said, ‘Miss News. In addition to her food coverage, O’Hara, I understand you have a degree she pitched and wrote a series of break- in home economics.’ And I said, ‘Yes, ing news articles about the 1977 murder sir.’ He said, ‘Well, I think that we need of Virginia Simpson, a Birmingham a food editor, and we want a food editor philanthropist and socialite. with some credentials.’ And I said, ‘Well, In the 1980s, after more than fi fteen I think that’s really nice but I— I really years as food editor, she fi nally convinced like what I’m doing.’ And he said, “Well, the paper to let her write under her own that’s fi ne; you’ll take over Monday as name. O’Hara spent her entire career— food editor.’ So that’s how much pull I forty-three years—at The Birmingham had in the early [19]60s.” News. She retired in 2008.

Read Jo Ellen O’Hara’s oral history at southernfoodways.org. It is one of fourteen interviews that SFA oral historian Annemarie Anderson gathered as part of our

Annemarie Anderson Women Food Journalists project.

62 southernfoodways.org Winter 2018 63 LAST COURSE

Every morning, just before the kids come down to eat their breakfast, I pour myself a cup of coffee and set an intention for the day. There is something about the heat radiating from the mug and warming your hands that is grounding. The smell of dark roast awakens the senses. The first cup of coffee is a full-bodied experience. I settle into the corner of my dining room where the light falls into the corner and take a self-portrait, often obscuring my face with flowers, my hands, or a cleverly placed shadow. As a black woman, it’s important for me to exercise agency over my image; to choose how I want to be seen by others in the world. This series is a creative practice turned ritual that is my way of connecting to the present moment, seeing the ordinary in extraordinary ways, and expressing gratitude.

— ALISHA SOMMER, photographer and writer

Gravy is a publication of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

The SFA documents, studies, and explores the diverse food cultures of the changing American South. Our work sets a welcome table where all may consider our history and our future in a spirit of respect and reconciliation.

JOHN T. EDGE Editor-in-Chief [email protected]

MARY BETH LASSETER Publisher [email protected]

SARA CAMP MILAM Editor [email protected]

DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS Visuals Editor [email protected]

RICHIE SWANN Designer [email protected]

CARLYNN CROSBY AND OLIVIA TERENZIO Nathalie Dupree Graduate Fellows and Fact Checkers

64 southernfoodways.org Character isn’t made by machine.

Every bottle of Maker’s Mark® Bourbon is still hand-dipped in our signature red wax. Learn more at makersmark.com.

9065-06 MMADV_6x9_CharacterMachine_AD.indd 1 5/30/18 3:30 PM