Getting Something to Eat in Jackson: Race, Class, and Food in the American South

Joseph C. Ewoodzie

Published by Princeton University Press 2021

Getting Something to Eat in Jackson

Race, Class, and Food in the American South

Joseph C. Ewoodzie

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691230672

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. is associate professor of sociology at Davidson College. He is the author of Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. Twitter @piko_e

Reviews

“So, so good. And important. Ewoodzie calls us to rethink the relationship between Black Southerners and the food traditions that they have developed and remade. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson gives us a rich glimpse of contemporary Black life, told from a place—Mississippi—that is vital to the story of who we are, where we have come from, and where we might go.”—B. Brian Foster, author of I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life

“This evocative and insightful book reveals how everyday decisions about what and how to eat unite and divide us along lines of race, class, and culture. Ewoodzie documents the foodways of Black Mississippians across the economic spectrum, from homeless men and middle-class strivers to single mothers and a mayoral candidate. What emerges is a memorable and lucid account of life and struggle, food and family in the modern American South.”—Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Chapter 1. Getting Something to Eat Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. Soul Food and Jackson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
PART I
Chapter 3. Smack—Late Afternoons Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
Chapter 4. Minister Montgomery and Charles—Mornings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
Chapter 5. Carl and Ray—Afternoons and Evenings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
PART II
Chapter 6. Zenani—Younger Days Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
Chapter 7. Zenani—Today Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
Chapter 8. Ms. Bea Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
PART III
Chapter 9. Davis Family— Lumpkins BBQ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
Chapter 10. Davis Family— Cooking with Ava Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Chapter 11. Charles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
PART IV
Chapter 12. Jonathan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Chapter 13. Dorian, Adrianne, and Othor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	222
Chapter 14. Running for Jackson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
CONCLUSION
Chapter 15. Studying Food, Race, and the South Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Chapter 16. Afterword and Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
A NOTE ON THE TYPE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307