The New York Times Book Review - Max Watman
Long one of the key voices in the discussion of Southern cuisine, Edge challenges the accepted narrative that traces immigrant traditions into a low trough of mediocrity lasting through World War II and lingering until James Beard, Julia Child and Craig Claiborne lit it up. The fire is stoked on the West Coast by Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck, but meanwhile the South is just there: provincial, traditional, doing what it's always done. Edge's book is an antidote to that misconception.
Publishers Weekly - Audio
06/26/2017
Edge, who serves as director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi, projects a relaxed yet erudite style in rendering the audio edition of his latest title, an exploration of his region’s complex—sometimes contradictory—history with food in the decades since World War II. His gentle drawl and generally leisurely pacing comes across like a conversational lecture, remaining teacherlike enough to convey the sense of someone expounding on an academic discipline. In delivering the many passages of the book tied to issues of race and ethnicity, Edge takes great pains to give divergent figures distinct voices without resorting to stock characterizations. This is no small feat, particularly given the baggage that surrounds the relationship between white and black southerners in the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. His depiction of the brave activism of civil rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer, who focused on agricultural justice for African-Americans in addition to her crusade for voting rights, evokes a stirring sense of time and place. A Penguin Press hardcover. (May)
Publishers Weekly
★ 02/27/2017
James Beard Award–winning writer and food historian Edge evokes potlikker—the rich, savory juices left after collard greens are boiled—in this excellent history Southern foodways and the people who’ve traveled them. 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. He introduces major figures such as Georgia Gilmore, who fed farmhand cooking to African-Americans in her house restaurant in the 1960s; the great civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who started Freedom Farm in Mississippi to encourage African-Americans to stay home and farm the land rather than migrating to Northern cities; and Stephen Gaskin, the leader of a Tennessee commune, who in many ways anticipated the organic and farm-to-table movements of today. Edge takes us from lunch counters (the “streamlined predecessors of fast food”) to the rise of fast food and the attempts of various chains (Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hardee’s, Bojangles) to preserve the comfort foods that many Southerners associated with growing up, such as biscuits and fried chicken. 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. (May)
From the Publisher
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
Library Journal
★ 03/15/2017
Edge (director, Southern Foodways Alliance; A Gracious Plenty) writes that over the past two generations significant changes in agriculture and food cultures have transformed the American South. Included are stories of African American cooks and bakers in support of the Montgomery, AL, bus boycott; President Lyndon B. Johnson's beloved family cook and unofficial advisor, Zephyr Wright; activist Fannie Lou Hamer's call for farming cooperatives to feed the poor; and regional hippie movements that grew, consumed, and sold their own produce. The narrative also touches on chefs such as Edna Lewis and Natalie Dupree, the proliferation of fast-food franchises led by Harland Sanders, and the celebration of barbecue as a national folk food and its pit masters as folk heroes. The author's frequent indictment of racism and class exploitation in the South stems largely from an agricultural and economic base: "If small-scale agriculture was an American ideal, large-scale agriculture…was an original sin of the American south." Edge concludes by likening the farmers in the employ of 21st-century corporate interests as little more than serfs. VERDICT An engrossing blend of food science, regionalism, and ethnic studies. Highly recommended for Southern historians, agriculturalists, cuisine enthusiasts, professional chefs, and general readers.—John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.
JUNE 2017 - AudioFile
John T. Edge, an accomplished food writer focusing on the South, narrates his audiobook in a discernible drawl. A native Georgian, he directs the Southern Foodways Alliance housed at the University of Mississippi. His voice, literal and figurative, informs every page of this work. The discerning listener will embrace Edge’s folksy style as he moves through 60 years of contemporary history, especially race relations, with his topics ranging widely—from the hippies of the ‘70s to the farm-to-table movement of this century. He tells stories of famous people like Colonel Sanders and Paula Deen as well as the unsung black cooks who created the region's famed barbecue. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-01-16
The director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi recounts the past 60 years of Southern food traditions, their effects on the South's culture, and vice versa.As Garden & Gun contributing editor and Oxford American columnist Edge notes at the beginning, this book is a "sequel" of sorts to Nashville social historian John Egerton's Southern Food (1987). Mixing deep scholarship, charming anecdotes, and his own extensive culinary explorations, Edge provides a chronological account by decades, starting in the 1950s. Throughout, as he entertains, Edge advances a multipronged thesis: that both the proud and shameful cultures of the Southern states can be understood through the socio-economics of cooking and eating; that the future of the South looks bright as cooking and eating evolve; and that Southern food cultures directly affect the rest of the country. The author's scholarship is undoubtedly compelling, but what will stick with most readers are the vignettes about specific chefs, restaurants, food producers, food marketers, politicians, celebrities, and race-based relationships. One of the more memorable portraits focuses on Craig Claiborne, a Mississippian with an unusual character who became a bestselling cookbook author and an influential food journalist for the New York Times. Claiborne's journalism helped lead to national recognition for two extremely different chefs, Paul Prudhomme of Louisiana and Bill Neal of North Carolina. The flashy Prudhomme not only spread the popularity of Cajun cuisine, but also successfully promoted the use of locally grown, fresh produce in restaurants. In addition to teaching chefs that superb cooking requires research, the more restrained Neal also helped cement the now-widespread belief that making food for the public involves an artistic sensibility.Without question, this is a book for foodies, but it is also for readers who may be indifferent to the food they consume yet care deeply about regionalism, individual health, and race relations, among other themes.
