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A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food
Combining the study of food culture with gender studies and using perspectives from historical, literary, environmental, and American studies, Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt examines what southern women’s choices about food tell us about race, class, gender, and social power.
Shaken by the legacies of Reconstruction and the turmoil of the Jim Crow era, different races and classes came together in the kitchen, often as servants and mistresses but also as people with shared tastes and traditions. Generally focused on elite whites or poor blacks, southern foodways are often portrayed as stable and unchanging―even as an untroubled source of nostalgia. A Mess of Greens offers a different perspective, taking into account industrialization, environmental degradation, and women’s increased role in the work force, all of which caused massive economic and social changes. Engelhardt reveals a broad middle of southerners that included poor whites, farm families, and middle- and working-class African Americans, for whom the stakes of what counted as southern food were very high.
Five “moments” in the story of southern food―moonshine, biscuits versus cornbread, girls’ tomato clubs, pellagra as depicted in mill literature, and cookbooks as means of communication―have been chosen to illuminate the connectedness of food, gender, and place. Incorporating community cookbooks, letters, diaries, and other archival materials, A Mess of Greens shows that choosing to serve cold biscuits instead of hot cornbread could affect a family’s reputation for being hygienic, moral, educated, and even godly.
Shaken by the legacies of Reconstruction and the turmoil of the Jim Crow era, different races and classes came together in the kitchen, often as servants and mistresses but also as people with shared tastes and traditions. Generally focused on elite whites or poor blacks, southern foodways are often portrayed as stable and unchanging―even as an untroubled source of nostalgia. A Mess of Greens offers a different perspective, taking into account industrialization, environmental degradation, and women’s increased role in the work force, all of which caused massive economic and social changes. Engelhardt reveals a broad middle of southerners that included poor whites, farm families, and middle- and working-class African Americans, for whom the stakes of what counted as southern food were very high.
Five “moments” in the story of southern food―moonshine, biscuits versus cornbread, girls’ tomato clubs, pellagra as depicted in mill literature, and cookbooks as means of communication―have been chosen to illuminate the connectedness of food, gender, and place. Incorporating community cookbooks, letters, diaries, and other archival materials, A Mess of Greens shows that choosing to serve cold biscuits instead of hot cornbread could affect a family’s reputation for being hygienic, moral, educated, and even godly.
248 pages, Paperback
First published September 25, 2011
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March 6, 2023
Y'all I actually had to write a review of this book for class so yes I am posting the entire thing here :)
Many popular culture descriptions of a quintessentially “Southern” meal might include descriptions of, “tomatoes thickly sliced and watermelon slicked even thicker,” “biscuits with homemade apple jelly,” “homemade peach ice cream,” “fried chicken piled high,” “pitchers of cold sweet tea,” and would receive bonus points for a reference to the infamous “Duke’s mayonnaise,” (Englehardt 2-3). Elizabeth Englehardt’s book, A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender & Southern Food, begins with these nostalgic descriptions of a summer picnic meal her family prepared and consumed at their home in North Carolina. While this book begins on a memory-soaked note, Englehardt uses her own food-related memory as a way into a more critical conversation surrounding the relationship between Southern foodways and gender. By taking a closer look into this particular meal, she argues one may find four “dilemmas” that she sets out to explore in detail for the rest of her book (3). These dilemmas include “questions of defining the South,” “balancing technology and nostalgia,” “recognizing racial and ethnic diversity,” and “deploying gender in … dishes and foodways” (4). Englehard argues that food beckons us into a deeper understanding of Southern people and Southern culture, both past and present. She writes, “because food both intimately connects and divides genders, classes, races, and regions, food makes history and culture palpable and palatable. People talk about food even when they are not intending to… and they talk about themselves when they intend to talk about food” (15). The book is divided into five chapters, and each chapter details a particular practice or moment in Southern food culture beginning in the 1870s and ending in the 1930s. In these chapters, Englehardt draws on a variety of sources, from popular literature to oral histories to federal and state documents to cookbooks to newspaper clippings to letters and more. Englehardt chose this specific time period because the “turn of the century South” was an era of massive transformation in the region, and as such she finds it is, “the crucial era to study if we are to understand food and gender in the twenty-first-century South,” (10). Englehardt argues that food is “richly gendered,” and she sets out to illuminate the connections between “food, gender, and region” by examining these five historical food moments and practices (8).
In chapter one, Englehardt begins with moonshine, illustrating how representations of female moonshine characters in literature “used a taboo food practice to explore gender roles during a period of shifting definitions” (49). These characters challenged the cultural idea that women were confined to domestic spaces, contributed to the creation of the “teenage southerner” in the popular imagination, presented rural citizens as “sophisticated producers and consumers” in the new consumer economy, and neutralized “explosive gender, race, and class politics” (49). Chapter two explores the social history of “morals, hygiene, class, race, and gender role alliances” embedded in the choice to make biscuits or cornbread at the turn of the twentieth century (50). While the tension between these two Southern breads is no longer as potent, Englehardt points out that they still remain gendered and racialized today. She notes that women are still primarily responsible for making them, and are “identified closely with them in our nostalgia about their symbolic meaning” (78). Additionally, both biscuits and cornbread are associated with soul food and are linked to the labor of African American women (78). Chapter three examines the tomato club movement, a movement that prompted girls in the rural South to negotiate “technology, consumer culture, career culture, and changing race and class politics on the one hand, and home, tradition, and family on the other” (89). Englehardt points to the tomato clubs and the text surrounding them as a “blurring between categories” of race, class, gender, and regional politics in the South (89). Chapter four explores the paradoxes of Southern food, those being the coexistence of plentiful agricultural production and widespread malnutrition, the consumer capitalist culture’s failed promise of salvation, and the tie between quintessentially southern foods (such as biscuits, canned goods, and moonshine) and the pellagra pandemic. Finally, chapter five points to the critical political work accomplished by community cookbooks and curb markets. This chapter was my favorite, and Engledardt’s call to treat texts like community cookbooks and curb market bulletins as essential texts in the academic conversation surrounding Southern food and gender is a compelling one.
A Mess of Greens is an extremely well-written, well-organized, and well-researched text that straddles both an academic and popular audience with notable grace. Englehardt effectively illustrates the connections between food, gender, and region in the Southern landscape past and present while gesturing to the evolution of these entanglements in the future. I was particularly moved by her acknowledgment of the limitations of a scholarly perspective - and a cynical perspective for that matter- when unearthing the “mess of greens” that is Southern foodways history. She warns against dismissing the academic value in texts like community cookbooks and market bulletins, arguing that there is far too much at stake within these documents even when we cannot prove definitively what they were seeking to accomplish. Englehardt prompts her readers and peers to cast aside a bit of their “scholarly caution” in order to take seriously these texts and the social and political work they documented and helped to accomplish. This is an invitation to “listen to the messages in the recipes, the signatures, and the organization of cookbooks from women’s groups in places large and small,” to “reconsider the talk, so often dismissed as foolish gossip beside the tables of the Saturday, curb markets as potentially transformative political debate,” in order to “get hints of some communication beyond the cynical to explain the persistence of southern food traditions,” (174, 190). Englehardt’s invitation to see these texts and these moments in Southern history as “tracks of resistance” is an invitation for other scholars to do the same, exploring moments and texts in Southern food history beyond the 60-year time period she examines. On a more personal note, Englehardt’s book has prompted me to seek out and take seriously texts and oral histories that exist outside of the canon of traditional academia. In my own research on Southern foodways, I want to balance my bibliographies with family and community cookbooks, oral histories, and letters, along with peer-reviewed sources, in order to continue in Englehardt’s work to unearth “the mess of greens hiding in plain sight – the connections between people and places that nourish and value both,” (174).
Many popular culture descriptions of a quintessentially “Southern” meal might include descriptions of, “tomatoes thickly sliced and watermelon slicked even thicker,” “biscuits with homemade apple jelly,” “homemade peach ice cream,” “fried chicken piled high,” “pitchers of cold sweet tea,” and would receive bonus points for a reference to the infamous “Duke’s mayonnaise,” (Englehardt 2-3). Elizabeth Englehardt’s book, A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender & Southern Food, begins with these nostalgic descriptions of a summer picnic meal her family prepared and consumed at their home in North Carolina. While this book begins on a memory-soaked note, Englehardt uses her own food-related memory as a way into a more critical conversation surrounding the relationship between Southern foodways and gender. By taking a closer look into this particular meal, she argues one may find four “dilemmas” that she sets out to explore in detail for the rest of her book (3). These dilemmas include “questions of defining the South,” “balancing technology and nostalgia,” “recognizing racial and ethnic diversity,” and “deploying gender in … dishes and foodways” (4). Englehard argues that food beckons us into a deeper understanding of Southern people and Southern culture, both past and present. She writes, “because food both intimately connects and divides genders, classes, races, and regions, food makes history and culture palpable and palatable. People talk about food even when they are not intending to… and they talk about themselves when they intend to talk about food” (15). The book is divided into five chapters, and each chapter details a particular practice or moment in Southern food culture beginning in the 1870s and ending in the 1930s. In these chapters, Englehardt draws on a variety of sources, from popular literature to oral histories to federal and state documents to cookbooks to newspaper clippings to letters and more. Englehardt chose this specific time period because the “turn of the century South” was an era of massive transformation in the region, and as such she finds it is, “the crucial era to study if we are to understand food and gender in the twenty-first-century South,” (10). Englehardt argues that food is “richly gendered,” and she sets out to illuminate the connections between “food, gender, and region” by examining these five historical food moments and practices (8).
In chapter one, Englehardt begins with moonshine, illustrating how representations of female moonshine characters in literature “used a taboo food practice to explore gender roles during a period of shifting definitions” (49). These characters challenged the cultural idea that women were confined to domestic spaces, contributed to the creation of the “teenage southerner” in the popular imagination, presented rural citizens as “sophisticated producers and consumers” in the new consumer economy, and neutralized “explosive gender, race, and class politics” (49). Chapter two explores the social history of “morals, hygiene, class, race, and gender role alliances” embedded in the choice to make biscuits or cornbread at the turn of the twentieth century (50). While the tension between these two Southern breads is no longer as potent, Englehardt points out that they still remain gendered and racialized today. She notes that women are still primarily responsible for making them, and are “identified closely with them in our nostalgia about their symbolic meaning” (78). Additionally, both biscuits and cornbread are associated with soul food and are linked to the labor of African American women (78). Chapter three examines the tomato club movement, a movement that prompted girls in the rural South to negotiate “technology, consumer culture, career culture, and changing race and class politics on the one hand, and home, tradition, and family on the other” (89). Englehardt points to the tomato clubs and the text surrounding them as a “blurring between categories” of race, class, gender, and regional politics in the South (89). Chapter four explores the paradoxes of Southern food, those being the coexistence of plentiful agricultural production and widespread malnutrition, the consumer capitalist culture’s failed promise of salvation, and the tie between quintessentially southern foods (such as biscuits, canned goods, and moonshine) and the pellagra pandemic. Finally, chapter five points to the critical political work accomplished by community cookbooks and curb markets. This chapter was my favorite, and Engledardt’s call to treat texts like community cookbooks and curb market bulletins as essential texts in the academic conversation surrounding Southern food and gender is a compelling one.
A Mess of Greens is an extremely well-written, well-organized, and well-researched text that straddles both an academic and popular audience with notable grace. Englehardt effectively illustrates the connections between food, gender, and region in the Southern landscape past and present while gesturing to the evolution of these entanglements in the future. I was particularly moved by her acknowledgment of the limitations of a scholarly perspective - and a cynical perspective for that matter- when unearthing the “mess of greens” that is Southern foodways history. She warns against dismissing the academic value in texts like community cookbooks and market bulletins, arguing that there is far too much at stake within these documents even when we cannot prove definitively what they were seeking to accomplish. Englehardt prompts her readers and peers to cast aside a bit of their “scholarly caution” in order to take seriously these texts and the social and political work they documented and helped to accomplish. This is an invitation to “listen to the messages in the recipes, the signatures, and the organization of cookbooks from women’s groups in places large and small,” to “reconsider the talk, so often dismissed as foolish gossip beside the tables of the Saturday, curb markets as potentially transformative political debate,” in order to “get hints of some communication beyond the cynical to explain the persistence of southern food traditions,” (174, 190). Englehardt’s invitation to see these texts and these moments in Southern history as “tracks of resistance” is an invitation for other scholars to do the same, exploring moments and texts in Southern food history beyond the 60-year time period she examines. On a more personal note, Englehardt’s book has prompted me to seek out and take seriously texts and oral histories that exist outside of the canon of traditional academia. In my own research on Southern foodways, I want to balance my bibliographies with family and community cookbooks, oral histories, and letters, along with peer-reviewed sources, in order to continue in Englehardt’s work to unearth “the mess of greens hiding in plain sight – the connections between people and places that nourish and value both,” (174).
September 11, 2013
Thesis built on literature of the time, not primary sources. The last chapter seem to be tagged on, made little sense. If Dr. Englehardt plans to continue the cross over from gender studies to food history, she should pay more careful attention to backing up her statements with fact, not popular writings of the day.
November 16, 2019
I really enjoyed digging into this - a much different take on the usually romanticized nature of "southern food". Much of it figures prominently in Appalachia - on moonshine, and the arguments between the worth of cornbread vs biscuits. I did not know about the girls' tomato clubs and found them wonderful, as well as the act of digging into cookbooks and market bulletins for hints into history. And the sobering, nearly forgotten truth about starvation and pellagra rampant in the mill workers is also included - the history of foodways told in the awful truth of nutritional lack.
August 1, 2017
Really enjoyed this book! A lucid account of the way southern food systems interact with and construct gendered dynamics and history. Read it if you're interested in gender, southern food, or the interplay between the two. It includes some real good (well-researched and compiled) analysis of histories of badass southern women using food in movements for justice.
Read
June 21, 2023Excellent book
April 26, 2025
This book was very informative, and I was especially delighted to see so many case studies from North Carolina.
February 16, 2013
I really enjoyed this book. It is clearly written by an academic who has a lot of passion for the subject. So while there is a ton of research, there is also heart. Being from up north and born before these events it was a fascinating read for me.
My interests in women's strength throughout history, cultural divide and food (hey I love it) all met together in this piece. I loved it and have recommended it to all of my friends who enjoy non-fiction.
My interests in women's strength throughout history, cultural divide and food (hey I love it) all met together in this piece. I loved it and have recommended it to all of my friends who enjoy non-fiction.
Want to read
September 14, 2012An academic take on gender and Southern foodways--I'm in the moonshine chapter but know I'll enjoy the others. It's slow reading in places because of all the academic research/theories . . . and I keep craving the recipes for the food mentioned, which such a scholarly work studiously excludes (as far as I can tell.)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews