Gravy

"Such As," by Wo Chan. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

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The SFA mourns the passing of Randall Kenan, a long-time member and frequent presenter at SFA events. This Gravy episode is a re-broadcast of Randall Kenan's presentation at the 2018 Southern Foodways Symposium, which studied food and literature.

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What are the legacies of our pasts? How does the past shape our today? How do the lives our parents and grandparents led affect the lives we lead today? Those are some of the questions writer Tommy Tomlinson of Charlotte has been asking himself. And he's asking them in a really interesting way. We are accustomed to hearing that question asked about something like education. If your parents went to college, you have a greater chance of going to college. But how does the life and work of your people affect your health? How does it affect what you eat? That's a newer and now urgent question for many Southerners.

Tommy Tomlinson is the author of The Elephant in the Room, a memoir about his decision to swear off Krispy Kreme and chili dogs as he approached 50 years old at 460 pounds. His podcast SouthBound features interviews with Southerners–artists, athletes, preachers, and politicians–exploring how place shapes what they do. He worked 23 years as a reporter and columnist for the Charlotte Observer.

This presentation was originally shared at the 2019 SFA fall symposium on food and labor. Matt Pearl produced the episode.

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In this episode of Gravy, Ashley M. Jones and Lee Bains III share verses about food labor.

Jones is an award-winning poet from Birmingham, Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017),  dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and Reparations Now! (Hub City Press 2021). Her work has earned several awards, including the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She shared the poems in this episode at the 2019 Winter Symposium in Birmingham.

Bains, also a native of Birmingham, is a singer/songwriter who founded the Glory Fires. His first interest in music came from the church he attended as a child. He went on to study literature at college in New York, but returned to Alabama and refocused his writing attention on music. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires have released 4 albums, including 2019’s Live at the Nick.  The songs shared in this episode were performed at the 2019 Southern Foodways Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi.

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From Punchin' the Dough to Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia, music has long included songs about labor. Scott Barretta, who once served as editor of Living Blues magazine, shares songs about food labor in folk, blues, and country music traditions.

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Festivals are terrific ways to celebrate place and food, to showcase community and culture. At their best, festivals are gathering spots for people who see each other all too seldom. They're celebrations of what a community values. And food festivals can democratize access to artisan goods and artisan producers by offering a bite, a taste, a glimpse, and a sip of the rarefied world of white-tablecloth dining. But that access comes with costs. Most festival-goers likely think their ticket price covers the food and wine they've queued up to taste. Most festival-goers would be wrong.

Hannah Raskin reported this story. Raskin explores food and culture for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. This presentation was originally commissioned for the 2019 Southern Foodways Fall Symposium on Food and Labor.

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"Shucking" by Elton Glaser

Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verses from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

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In 1983, a Lafayette housewife named Bootsie John Landry self-published a cookbook called The Best of South Louisiana Cooking. Sprinkled among the expected Cajun staples were less familiar recipes like fattoush and something called Sittee’s Lentil Salad. Bootsie was part of a large Lebanese family and a greater community that began emigrating from Lebanon to Louisiana as early as the 1880s. Her cousins are the Reggie family, who for the past century have been cooking up traditional Lebanese comfort food from their home in Lafayette. Fred Reggie and his daughter, Simone, share how they’ve peppered traditional Lebanese recipes with Cajun lagniappe to create “LebaCajun” food.  

The episode was reported and produced by Sarah Holtz.

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This is a story about a briefcase and a cracker box. It’s a story about finding extraordinary things in ordinary places. In the South Louisiana town of Donaldsonville, two families—the Quezaires and the Savoia-Guillots—unearthed time capsules of local history within family keepsakes. These two archives tell the story of a town with a complicated past, unraveling a timeline of slavery, emancipation, immigration, and mutual aid. Roy Quezaire, Jr. shares his memories of the True Friends Benevolent Association, and Julie Guillot unveils a collection of World War II-era heirlooms at her family’s restaurant, the First & Last Chance Café.

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When Wanda Lugo opened her Venezuelan restaurant, Patacon Latin Cuisine, in 2015, she wasn’t sure how the city of Lafayette would react. Many Lafayette residents had never tasted Venezuelan food before. Wanda’s opening week was one of the busiest they’ve had in the restaurant’s five-year history. She runs Patacon with her daughter, Maria, her son, Daniel, and her niece, Elimar. It’s no accident that the Lugos ended up in Lafayette. Wanda’s husband, Jose, is an electrical engineer at Halliburton, and like Acadiana, Venezuela is an oil center. When the Venezuelan economy began to show signs of trouble, Jose requested a transfer and the Lugos ended up in Lafayette in 2006. Today, Patacon is a hub for the growing Latinx community in the region, and Lafayette wouldn’t be the same without Patacon’s arepas and empanadas.  

The episode was reported and produced by Sarah Holtz. Sarah is an independent radio producer and documentary artist based in New Orleans.

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