How does Southern food look from the outside? The form is caught in constantly dueling stereotypes: It's so often imagined as either the touchingly down-home feast or the heart-stopping health scourge of a nation. But as any Southern transplant will tell you once they've spent time in the region, Southerners share their lives in food, with a complex mix of stories of belonging and not belonging and of traditions that form identities of many kinds. Cornbread Nation 7, edited by Francis Lam, brings together the best Southern food writing from recent years, including well-known food writers such as Sara Roahen and Brett Anderson, a couple of classic writers such as Langston Hughes, and some newcomers. The collection, divided into five sections ("Come In and Stay Awhile," "Provisions and Providers," "Five Ways of Looking at Southern Food," "The South, Stepping Out," and "Southerners Going Home"), tells the stories both of Southerners as they move through the world and of those who ended up in the South. It explores from where and from whom food comes, and it looks at what food means to culture and how it relates to home.
"Cornbread Nation 7 is American regionalism at its finest. It's a splendid collection of tales of Southerners traveling abroad, immigrants journeying to the South, and children of immigrants living in the South and then reflecting on their heritage. Through the meticulous efforts of guest editor Francis Lam, on behalf of the Southern Foodways Alliance and general editor John T. Edge, we have been
Shyam K. Sriram, PopMatters
"The vivid, powerful, and disturbing stories of The Viewing Room exhibit a deep caring about the preciousness of life and the strength of the bonds that can link us to one another. When love and death are locked in intimate embrace, the only recourse for bystanders is compassion. Brave and honest, these stories whisper to the reader, 'Take care, take care,' and, 'Help one another.'"
Zinia Randles, Tennessee Libraries
"Love' and 'home' (including homes far from the South) show up more than once in this book, but please don't fear Crock-Pots of sentimentality. The subject-this great complicated subject of Southern food, Southern food history and chefs, the habits and humor and rules that go in and around and behind our food-is here described and analyzed and eulogized by some of the South's finest writers."
