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

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A vivid portrait of African American life in todays urban South that uses food to explore the complex interactions of race and class

Getting Something to Eat in Jackson uses foodwhat people eat and howto explore the interaction of race and class in the lives of African Americans in the contemporary urban South. Joseph Ewoodzie Jr. examines how foodwaysfood availability, choice, and consumptionvary 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 Americansfrom upper-middle-class patrons of the citys 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.

Reviews

"An Essence Best New Winter Read"
"Nominee for the James Beard Foundation Book Award in Writing"
"Winner of the C. Wright Mills Award, The Society for the Study of Social Problems"
"What [Ewoodzie] finds runs counter to popular narrative, which often attributes meal choices among Southern Black Americans to traditions that center on the consumption of soul food. . . . Ewoodzie concludes that food is one of the tools used to construct, refine, and reconstruct racial boundaries. . . .His sobering storytelling . . . also offers vitally important insight for food rescue industry service providers and gatekeepers."---Cassie M. Chew, Civil Eats

Author Bio

Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. is associate professor of sociology and the Vann Professor of Racial Justice at Davidson College. He is the author of Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hops Early Years. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. Twitter @piko_e