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The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region
In The Edible South , Marcie Cohen Ferris presents food as a new way to chronicle the American South's larger history. Ferris tells a richly illustrated story of southern food and the struggles of whites, blacks, Native Americans, and other people of the region to control the nourishment of their bodies and minds, livelihoods, lands, and citizenship. The experience of food serves as an evocative lens onto colonial settlements and antebellum plantations, New South cities and civil rights-era lunch counters, chronic hunger and agricultural reform, counterculture communes and iconic restaurants as Ferris reveals how food--as cuisine and as commodity--has expressed and shaped southern identity to the present day.
The region in which European settlers were greeted with unimaginable natural abundance was simultaneously the place where enslaved Africans vigilantly preserved cultural memory in cuisine and Native Americans held tight to kinship and food traditions despite mass expulsions. Southern food, Ferris argues, is intimately connected to the politics of power. The contradiction between the realities of fulsomeness and deprivation, privilege and poverty, in southern history resonates in the region's food traditions, both beloved and maligned.
The region in which European settlers were greeted with unimaginable natural abundance was simultaneously the place where enslaved Africans vigilantly preserved cultural memory in cuisine and Native Americans held tight to kinship and food traditions despite mass expulsions. Southern food, Ferris argues, is intimately connected to the politics of power. The contradiction between the realities of fulsomeness and deprivation, privilege and poverty, in southern history resonates in the region's food traditions, both beloved and maligned.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published September 22, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 13, 2016
Saw this while checking out the local/regional shelves at Lemuria Books in Jackson MS; yes you need to stop in there if you are a book lover. And if you live around Jackson, I might even suggest a nice trip one hot weekend to spend a few hours in the bookstore, some time in the Fondren co-op and maybe a stroll through Eudora Welty's garden.
The title was underwhelming, but the size of it, the extensive bibliography in the back and the subtitle did intrigue me, as did the identification of it as being from the same author as Matzoh Ball Gumbo, which I had read and appreciated. The book is broken into 3 sections: antebellum and post antebellum Southern food ("Plantation South"); late 19th c/early 20th c ("New South"); and post 1950 ("modern South"), which is a very useful way to think about food and folkways in any American region actually. Each section has fascinating information about growing food or cuisine and uses scads of citations from prior research and popular books.
The author is a professor of American studies at UNC Chapel Hill and is well known among local food activists across the South. In this book, she has taken a wide view of Southern food since Jamestown days, using a great many of our most respected scholars work to weave a compelling and absorbing narrative. What is tricky about the long history here is the need to address earlier inaccuracies and overt racism embedded in some of that scholarship. The author does a deft job addressing those shortcomings without deleting what is useful from her predecessors' work.
The Plantation South section was less comprehensive than I had hoped, especially knowing the beginnings of my own region around New Orleans as a tobacco company for the French, which has led to a commodity and export agricultural system that extends to this day. I had hoped for more about that era and more details of the enslaved and forced labor system of the Southern agriculture system, but it is quite likely that the scholarship was just not there to use.
The New South section however, should be required reading for any researcher or embedded activist working in the South. The founding of the Extension Service, of the home economics and demonstration movement and the research into healthy foods to reduce diet-based illnesses across the impoverished South are examples of the rich tapestry the author does explore and, for my money, is the best part of the book. Many times, I found myself referring to the notes and bibliography to record the name of the book she refers to in the section. Additionally, I much appreciated the section on Old Southern Tearooms and the account of the deliberate development (at the turn of the 20th century) of the myth of the genteel South, where a "southern narrative of abundance, skilled black cooks, loyal servants and generous hospitality of gracious planters and their wives" was displayed at places like Colonial Williamsburg, Charleston and of course New Orleans. That set of tableaus deliberately masked the story of a much more complicated and less romantic time. I certainly hope that her detailed work here separating fact from fiction may help put these embellished or completely fabricated stories of the "old South" in their proper place.
The Modern South section adds history on civil rights (how does it relate to food you say? lunch counter sit-ins, Black Panther food programs, men’s-only lunch rooms anyone?), and history on federal programs like national school lunch program are thoughtfully offered. The pieces on organizing natural food coops and buying clubs were so very welcome as little is available in popular research about how important these efforts were to the beginnings of the current local food/farmers markets movement happening today. Unfortunately, I was taken aback by the scarce information on the last 35 years which has been a dizzying and somewhat gratifying time for food sovereignty work. I can only hope for another book from this author that has the same level of detail, and covers the last era from a grassroots or even a policy point of view. In any case, as I told a market leader in one of those vibrant places of local food in the South, this book is definitely a keeper and one destined to be used extensively among researchers, activists and policy makers.
The title was underwhelming, but the size of it, the extensive bibliography in the back and the subtitle did intrigue me, as did the identification of it as being from the same author as Matzoh Ball Gumbo, which I had read and appreciated. The book is broken into 3 sections: antebellum and post antebellum Southern food ("Plantation South"); late 19th c/early 20th c ("New South"); and post 1950 ("modern South"), which is a very useful way to think about food and folkways in any American region actually. Each section has fascinating information about growing food or cuisine and uses scads of citations from prior research and popular books.
The author is a professor of American studies at UNC Chapel Hill and is well known among local food activists across the South. In this book, she has taken a wide view of Southern food since Jamestown days, using a great many of our most respected scholars work to weave a compelling and absorbing narrative. What is tricky about the long history here is the need to address earlier inaccuracies and overt racism embedded in some of that scholarship. The author does a deft job addressing those shortcomings without deleting what is useful from her predecessors' work.
The Plantation South section was less comprehensive than I had hoped, especially knowing the beginnings of my own region around New Orleans as a tobacco company for the French, which has led to a commodity and export agricultural system that extends to this day. I had hoped for more about that era and more details of the enslaved and forced labor system of the Southern agriculture system, but it is quite likely that the scholarship was just not there to use.
The New South section however, should be required reading for any researcher or embedded activist working in the South. The founding of the Extension Service, of the home economics and demonstration movement and the research into healthy foods to reduce diet-based illnesses across the impoverished South are examples of the rich tapestry the author does explore and, for my money, is the best part of the book. Many times, I found myself referring to the notes and bibliography to record the name of the book she refers to in the section. Additionally, I much appreciated the section on Old Southern Tearooms and the account of the deliberate development (at the turn of the 20th century) of the myth of the genteel South, where a "southern narrative of abundance, skilled black cooks, loyal servants and generous hospitality of gracious planters and their wives" was displayed at places like Colonial Williamsburg, Charleston and of course New Orleans. That set of tableaus deliberately masked the story of a much more complicated and less romantic time. I certainly hope that her detailed work here separating fact from fiction may help put these embellished or completely fabricated stories of the "old South" in their proper place.
The Modern South section adds history on civil rights (how does it relate to food you say? lunch counter sit-ins, Black Panther food programs, men’s-only lunch rooms anyone?), and history on federal programs like national school lunch program are thoughtfully offered. The pieces on organizing natural food coops and buying clubs were so very welcome as little is available in popular research about how important these efforts were to the beginnings of the current local food/farmers markets movement happening today. Unfortunately, I was taken aback by the scarce information on the last 35 years which has been a dizzying and somewhat gratifying time for food sovereignty work. I can only hope for another book from this author that has the same level of detail, and covers the last era from a grassroots or even a policy point of view. In any case, as I told a market leader in one of those vibrant places of local food in the South, this book is definitely a keeper and one destined to be used extensively among researchers, activists and policy makers.
June 18, 2025
The book is divided into 3 sections chronologically: The Early South/Plantation South, the New South, and the Modern South. Excellent read on the topic. The New South was most interesting.
I learned parts of my cities’ history when it highlighted restaurants involved in the civil rights movement in Modern South.
I did not finish the book due to length, as I was reading for leisure and not research. I estimate 60%.
I learned parts of my cities’ history when it highlighted restaurants involved in the civil rights movement in Modern South.
I did not finish the book due to length, as I was reading for leisure and not research. I estimate 60%.
November 16, 2024
Kinda the book on it... but a LONG book on it
January 27, 2015
even my birthplace, Flat Rock, gets a shout out. very interesting and covers a LOT of ground
June 23, 2015
excellent introduction to history and politics of southern food traditions.
Read
May 9, 2018This is one of the most aesthetically pleasing books I've read in a long time, and from a UP no less!
Very detailed cataloging of the every day food situation over centuries of history of the American South. Complete notes/citations.
Very detailed cataloging of the every day food situation over centuries of history of the American South. Complete notes/citations.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews