Book
Getting something to eat in Jackson : race, class, and food in the American South
Publication Information
Princeton ; Oxford : Princeton University Press, [2021]
Physical Description
x, 305 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 25 cm
Summary
A vivid portrait of African American life in today"s urban South that uses food to explore the complex interactions of race and class. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson uses food-what people eat and how-to explore the interaction of race and class in the lives of African Americans in the contemporary urban South. Joseph Ewoodzie Jr. examines how "foodways" -food availability, choice, and consumption-vary greatly between classes of African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi, and how this reflects and shapes their very different experiences of a shared racial identity. Ewoodzie spent more than a year following a group of socioeconomically diverse African Americans- from upper-middle-class patrons of the city's fine-dining restaurants to men experiencing homelessness who must organize their days around the schedules of soup kitchens. Ewoodzie goes food shopping, cooks, and eats with a young mother living in poverty and a grandmother working two jobs. He works in a Black-owned BBQ restaurant, and he meets a man who decides to become a vegan for health reasons but who must drive across town to get tofu and quinoa. Ewoodzie also learns about how soul food is changing and why it is no longer a staple survival food. Throughout, he shows how food choices influence, and are influenced by, the racial and class identities of Black Jacksonians. By tracing these contemporary African American foodways, Getting Something to Eat in Jackson offers new insights into the lives of Black Southerners and helps challenge the persistent homogenization of blackness in American life.
Contents
- Getting something to eat
- Soul food and Jackson
- Smack-late afternoons
- Minister Montgomery and Charles-Mornings
- Carl and Ray-afternoons and evenings
- Zenani-younger days
- Zenani-today
- Ms. Bea
- Davis family-Lumpkins BBQ
- Davis family-cooking with Ava
- Charles
- Jonathan
- Dorian, Adrianne, Othor
- Running for Jackson
- Conclusion
- Studying food, race, and the South
- Afterword.
Subjects
- Food habits.
- Food security.
- African Americans > Food > History.
- Cooking, American > Southern style > History.
- Social classes.
- African Americans > Mississippi > Jackson > Social conditions.
- African Americans > Race identity.
- African Americans > Social life and customs.
- African Americans > Social conditions.
- Ethnology.
- Jackson (Miss.).