A people's history of Southern food that reveals how the region came to be at the forefront of American culinary culture and how issues of race have shaped Southern cuisine over the last six decades.
John T. Edge is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun and a columnist for the Oxford American. In 2012, he won the James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He is director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. Edge has written or edited more than a dozen books. He has served as culinary curator for the weekend edition of NPR's All Things Considered, and he has been a regular columnist at the New York Times. Edge lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his son, Jess, and his wife, Blair Hobbs.
"Long one of the key voices in the discussion of Southern cuisine,
Edge challenges the accepted narrative... [and] watch[es] the
momentum build until the South comes into its own."--New York Times
Book Review "Edge is an ecumenist when it comes to such culinary
crises, and that's what makes him so wonderful a surveyor of the
last 50 years of southern history...Decade by decade, Edge shows
that we aren't just what we eat; we are where that food was grown,
how it was cooked, who cooked it, and who all gets to eat it with
us." --The New Republic "To read "Potlikker" is to understand
modern Southern history at a deeper level than you're used to. not
just a history of Southern food; it also stands as a singularly
important history of the South itself." --The Bitter Southerner
"Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University
of Mississippi, uses food as a lens to explore Southern identity,
seeking to reconcile a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow with who
claims the Southern table today." -- NPR "A panoramic mural of the
South's culinary heritage, illuminating the region's troubled place
at the American table and the unsung role of cooks in the quest for
social justice." --O, The Oprah Magazine "In dense detail, this
book ranges fluently over the politics, drama and romance of
Southern foodways."-- Nashville Scene
"A legitimate coup. The book traces the culinary and social history
of food in the American South--and doesn't pull any punches about
our country's past or present." --Paste "You'll be hard-pressed to
find a more complete take on the South's complicated culinary
legacy and its impact on the nation." --Wine Enthusiast's Favorite
Books of 2017 "An insightful, refreshing, and at times revealingly
ugly examination of food and its place in the South...In the
evolving story of Southern food, The Potlikker Papers is a
must-read force for good."--Charleston City Paper
"Like sitting down to a bountiful Sunday Southern dinner. Edge
uncovers the rich narratives that lie beneath Southern food,
illustrating the tangled and compelling webs of politics and social
history that are often served up alongside our biscuits and
gravy... Edge's delightful and charming book invites us to pull up
a chair for a satisfying repast of tales that illustrate that the
food history of the modern South reveals the dynamic character of
Southern history itself." --BookPage
"[Edge] has created a canon of Southern food writing that follows
in the tradition of legends like John Egerton and Vertamae
Grosvenor. The Potlikker Papers is an extension of this cultural
plumbing of the South and its meaning in modern America... Edge
asks us to consider how we, as Americans, active and passive
Southerners, journalists, and eaters, can begin to set the record
straight in this very moment--to tell the histories of those living
and working in the South with truth and humanity. To recognize them
and say their names."--Saveur.com "Masterful...When it comes to
chronicling Southern food, John T. Edge puts his motor where his
mouth is, logging many thousands of miles over the years to
illuminate these hidden corners of the region's cuisine like no
other...Edge expertly sieves through decades of cultural influences
to explore how today's rich culinary tradition emerged."--Garden &
Gun "The one food book you must read this year...No matter the
subject, there is always something to learn from Edge's work...The
Potlikker Papers is a reminder of where we've been, how far we've
come, and how far we still have to go."--Southern Living
"Edge's research and command of prose make this a necessary
history." --Booklist (starred review)
"In the South, Edge notes, food and eating intertwine inextricably
with politics and social history, and he deftly traces these
connections from the civil rights movement to today's Southern
eclectic cultural cuisine...In this excellent culinary history,
Edge also profiles some of the South's greatest cooks--Edna Lewis,
Craig Claiborne, Paula Deen--who represent the sometimes tortured
relationship between the South and its foodways." --Publishers
Weekly (starred review)
"Mixing deep scholarship, charming anecdotes, and his own extensive
culinary explorations, Edge provides a chronological account by
decades, starting in the 1950s...What will stick with most readers
are the vignettes about specific chefs, restaurants, food
producers, food marketers, politicians, celebrities, and race-based
relationships...Without question, this is a book for foodies, but
it is also for readers who...care deeply about regionalism,
individual health, and race relations." -- Kirkus (starred review)
"The Potlikker Papers, offers the most honest, brutal, beautiful,
and insightful discussion to date on the country's most complicated
cuisine--from the food that fueled the Montgomery Bus Boycott to
the Mexican, Vietnamese, and other international dishes that feed
the New South." -- Southern Living
"What we eat tells our story. John T. Edge wonderfully tells the
story, through grits, pone, and pig meat, of the ever-morphing
American South--fleshing out the caricatures of Harland Sanders and
Paul Prudhomme, traveling history's through lines from the
lunch-counter protests of the Civil Rights era to the latter-day
flowering of pitmaster chic. So good, so fun, so thorough, so
important." - David Kamp, author of The United States of Arugula
"Is "The Potlikker Papers" a history of the South by way of food
stories, or a story about Southern food by way of our history? By
the time you come to the end of this rigorous volume, you'll know
that the two are indivisible. Edge has long shaped the conversation
about food not only in this region but across the country through
his pulpit as director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. The
Potlikker Papers is his defining contribution to that
conversation." --Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Favorite Food
Writing of 2017 "There are certain writers who you just know have
found the perfect form for their creative expression, and so it is
with John T. Edge, our preeminent chronicler of southern food and
culture. In this rich, compact history of the South through its
food and cooks--from Martin Luther King's favorite fried chicken
artist in Montgomery, Georgia Gilmore, to The New York Times's
long-reigning food editor Craig Claiborne--Edge has produced a
wonderful narrative of the region's evolution on race, gender, and
justice, with a light-handed knowingness at once sympathetic and
critical." --Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Carry Me Home "If I know anything about Southern cuisine it's
because of John T. Edge. Somehow he's weaved together a story of
how Southern food shaped, not only what was on the table, but
American history. " -- David Chang, CEO/Founder, Momofuku "Edge's
book means to be about food, but quickly veers into a close
examination of the Deep South, before revealing itself as the
smartest history of race in America in a generation." --Jack Hitt
"The Potlikker Papers takes readers on an exceptional journey
through the modern American South, driven by the expressive power
of food as a language and currency of place. John T. Edge's
profound analysis of the region's vibrant--but always
contested---food cultures skillfully navigates the rough road from
the civil rights movement's bus boycotts to the vibrant culinary
diversity of the contemporary South. This work is essential reading
in the American canon of foodways scholarship." -- Marcie Cohen
Ferris, author of The Edible South
"It should come as no surprise that John T. Edge would use a
"salvage food" to celebrate ignored and forgotten kitchen stories.
Recognizing the unrecognized is what he does. With his trademark
style of compelling storytelling, Edge sets a table where everyone
is welcome and every story matters -- where untold histories teach
new truths that challenge beliefs, while salving old wounds. The
Potlikker Papers inspirited me with renewed hope for unity not just
in Edge's beloved South but anywhere there is food to eat and
people to eat it." -- Toni Tipton-Martin, author of Blue Grass Cook
Book and The Jemima Code "Confidence is a funny thing. Without it,
you may cling to poles, draw boundaries, and take aim at the other.
The South never had much confidence in me, a foul mouthed, shants
wearing, 1st Generation Taiwanese-Chinese-American conceived in
Maryland and raised in Orlando. I left as soon as I could swearing
I'd never open my heart again. I hadn't thought about it for quite
some time, but then John T. boiled off the greens, discarded the
nasty bits, and served me Potlikker. In it is a nutrient rich
reflection on the South's past, present, and future. It gives me
confidence that one day I can love the South all over again." --
Eddie Huang, author of Fresh Off the Boat
"John T Edge has unearthed an extraordinary people's history of the
South, brilliantly told "through its most influential export: food.
Like its namesake broth, THE POTLIKKER PAPERS is a concentrated,
complicated account of the little-known cooks and humble
community-builders who fed each other and fueled a movement for
inclusion." -- Beth Macy, author of Truevine and Factory Man
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