South Carolina Books

Cornbread Nation 1 was edited by John Edgerton and includes fifty-one original features and selections previously published in magazines and journals, all celebrating Southern people, places, traditions, and foods. It was published in association with Southern Foodways Alliance, a group of foodies who "celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the diverse food cultures of the American South."

There are now four collections of essays thus the "1" in the title-- the "annual" has appeared four times over six years. The other collections are Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue, Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South, and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

This volume is organized by "People," "Times," "Things" and "Places", but it's much more fun to pick and choose your dishes much as you would at a buffet in Northern Virginia -- nothing prevents you from having dessert before the soup, for example.

As Edgerton writes: "Individually, the selections in these pages can stand alone; they need no shoring up from us. Collectively, they buttress our conviction that nothing else the South has to offer to the nation and the world--with the possible exception of its music--is more eternally satisfying, heartwarming, reconciling, and memorable than its food. Our dishes and beverages express our faith, our good humor, our binding ties, our eternal joys and sorrows, our readiness for whatever awaits us."

A few of my favorites: Rick Bragg's "Dinner Rites," Thanksgiving meal in Alabama with cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese ("a vegetable in the South.") "I eat until it hurts, and my brother Sam will grin at me, because he lives here, works at the cotton mill, and can eat it all the time."

Fred Chappell on "ice" tea: "I am one southerner who detests that dirty water the color of oak-leaf tannin."

Kathleen Purvis teaches that pig liver, head parts, and cornmeal spiced with pepper and sage is called "livermush" (possibly brought south from Philadelphia by German immigrants).

This collection sets a very high and enjoyable standard for the entire Cornbread series.

Robert C. Ross 2008
Robert C. Ross 2008

I truly could not put this book down. My daughter gave this book to me for my birthday last fall. When I looked at the title, I was alittle skeptical. As soon as I started reading the book I was completely absorbed. If you want to know about Southern cooking or the Southern people this book is for you. What a fun book.

The Southern Foodways Alliance was founded to celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the food cultures of the American South. Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South is a collection of stories, poems, and essays about the foodways of the mountain South. It is one of a continuing series which includes Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

"Geographically, that region is defined as the Appalachian range beginning in Maryland and West Virginia and extending to the northernmost hills of Alabama, plus the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri. Culinarily, those borders extend farther to include eastern Texas ... also the fingers of the hillbilly diaspora that stretched north into the factories of Ohio, Michigan, Chicago, Indiana, and south and east into the mills of the Carolina lowlands."

Ronni Lundy continues in her introduction:

"In other words, looking through the lens of real Southern mountain food -- the methods of its growing, processing and eating -- we began to see a vivid picture of the region and its people that had little in common with their most prevalent and demeaning stereotypes. ... How do you hold to assumptions of ignorance when you see a list of dozens of native greens, berries, barks and seeds that were turned into food and/or medicine? Or believe in clannishness and hostility when you hear the catechism of a Loaves and Fishes ethic that made friends and strangers alike welcome at mountain tables?"

This book contains a few recipes, but it is more about people's connection to the land and to each other, and what food says about a people. It describes families and meals: pole beans, mutton, fried pies, beaten biscuits with homemade apple jelly, pawpaws (also known as custard apples), wild greens in the spring and syrup-boiling festivals in the fall. Even possum: Joel Davis writes it "doesn't taste like chicken -- no, sir. ... To my undereducated palate, it resembles pot roast."

The book is divided into six sections: "Planting the Essential Seeds: Corn and Beans," "Raising Consciousness," "Cultivating Community," "The Meat of the Matter," "The Harvest," and "Food and Love." Poets and authors include Nikki Giovanni, Rick Bragg, Harriette Simpson Arnow, Jim Wayne Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Early, and Marilou Awiakta.

Two of my favorite essays: Rick Bragg tells how Cajun cooking cures a broken heart. David Cecelski sings "The Oyster Shucker's Song" about the Carolina oyster industry.

Altogether, this book is a buffet of Southern writing -- and a delicious series of meals for this reviewer.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Cornbread Nation 3: Foods Of The Mountain South is the third such collection from the Appalachians and Ozarks and blends the best of Southern regional food writings - a blend which includes poems, essays, culinary history and cultural insights aplenty. Any expecting a recipe collection alone may be disappointed; but there are plenty of Southern cookbooks on the market - and relatively few Southern collections of literary food writing, making Cornbread Nation something to relish.

This is a stunning book! The pictures are large, clear, and colorful and the paintings are truly artful. My fiance and I are using this book as a guest book for our wedding because there are lots of large white spaces.

This collaborative volume reflects a view of America's most beautiful city never seen before. The combination of crisp clean and perfectly lit photographs with the artists's eye for color in the paintings reflect a great city at its most glorious. A wonderful souvenir or family treasure.

Great book by a person in the know. As a past resident of the area it was really interesting learning more about the area.

Like natives in many of the most beautiful parts of our country, those in the cloud-laced mountains of Western North Carolina complain about growth and change even though they're the ones who opened the door to it - in this case, development of the region's tourism and second-home economy.

In "Creating the Land of the Sky," Richard D. Starnes, a history professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, offers a compelling analysis and history of tourism development in Western North Carolina.

With dogged research and an engaging narrative writing style, Starnes traces the history of tourism in the region to the early nineteenth century, when low-country planters fled the "fever season" each summer to the milder climates of the mountain South. "Whole communities took on new characters," Starnes writes, "as mountain towns such as Hendersonville, Flat Rock and Asheville became seasonal centers of southern aristocracy."

Starnes' book is packed with insider political tales, such as how the Blue Ridge Parkway got its route, and delightful, sometimes devilish, characters, including many we know well in other contexts. Consider these words that novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote to his mother about Edwin Wiley Grove, the quinine tonic magnate who built the luxurious Grove Park Inn of Asheville: "Grove is a great man because he sells more pills than anyone else," Wolfe wrote, complaining that tourism had changed the culture and values of the city so that wealth, rather than character, determined greatness. "Greater Asheville," Wolfe wrote, "does not mean `100,000 by 1930,' that we are 4 times as civilized as our grandfathers because we go four times as fast in automobiles, because buildings are four times as tall."

As a native of the region himself, Starnes' insights are astute and often poignant. But while some of his subjects - such as Harrah's Cherokee Casino, opened in 1997 - seem deserving of criticism for changing mountain culture and morals, Starnes handles them all with the fairness and respect you'd expect from a distinguished historian. "Tourism did bring progress, government aid and new opportunities to western North Carolina," he concludes. "It also created an atmosphere that led to the exploitation of labor, land and culture."

Whether you're a native North Carolinian, or a visitor like me (one of the thousands of Floridians who crowd these mountains each summer), I highly recommend Starnes' book to anyone who cares about the majestic "Land of the Sky."

Crossing the Color Line is a superbly presented collection of stories by Alice Adams, Toni Bambara, and others examine the truth about the color line between blacks and whites, using contemporary stories by novelists to explore the issues and problems. The stories which comprise Crossing The Color Line provide insights more charged than debates and probe issues of politics, class, gender and religion alike.

Stories by Alice Adams, Toni Bambara, and others examine the truth about the color line between blacks and whites, using contemporary stories by novelists to explore the issues and problems. The stories which comprise Crossing the Color Line provide insights more charged than debates and probe issues of politics, class, gender and religion alike.

I didn't know Huck Finn had a married sister until I read Crusoe's Island. I found the lady and her autobiography warmly engaging and wonderful. She says 'pine straw' and we say 'pine shats', but the smell of each, like her book, is lasting.

I didn't know Huck Finn had a married sister until I read Crusoe's Island. I found the lady and her autobiography warmly engaging and wonderful. She says 'pine straw' and we say 'pine shats', but the smell of each, like her book, is lasting.

With so much publishing money funneled into Chick Lit and the next mass market success, it is more than just a little refreshing to find a book of poems of such caliber. Wright, with his dark, lyrical style is the sort of poet who is the real deal. His sensibilities, reminscent of Roethke and Dickey, materialize in his masterful images and his language; while his approach to nature (especially a blue crab) is fresh and unique. His perception of the South denies the current trends of focusing on the "redneck qualities" and instead, revisits Southern landscape and relationships in a tone both comically horrific and heartbreakingly beautiful. Wright is an emerging enchanter to enjoy.

Give this book a chance, and see why the University Presses are putting out the best work right now.

It's hard to remain sedate about a book that shows such promise: I was one of the few who had access to the manuscript of William Wright's Dark Orhard before it was selected for the Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize. For a first time book, Wright's poetry strikes me as masterly; he has a inherent sense of line break and meter, although most of his work is free verse. In addition, Wright's work synthesizes the sensibilities of preceding poets like Roethke, Dickey, Ammons, James Wright, Richard Hugo, and, in his more lyrically obsessive pieces, Dylan Thomas; Wright's style is definitely his own. My favorite pieces from the book include "Dreaming of My Parents," "Cruelty," "Benfield, Remembered," "Dead Dog," and "In Fear of Holiness"-- all of these poems interlace Wright's half-imagined, half-experienced childhood with interior exploration, really great stuff.

Nature and humanity coalesce in some of the best, freshest poetry that I've recently read, a welcome relief from the esoteric, propaganda fueled poetry that claims much of today's literary landscape.

Rita Dove's poetry won her a Pulitzer in her mid-thirties; she went on to became the youngest (and first African-American) Poet Laureate of the United States. It should not be surprising, then, that her first venture into playwriting has produced an enormously powerful and beautiful work. The themes are intricate, the main characters full-bodied and the language -- oh, the language -- nothing short of stunning. What is surprising is that, with all of the above and with a premise that could easily lend itself to parodic or pretentious treatment, she has produced a play that imitates nothing, never takes itself too seriously and expresses itself (dare I say despite its monumental lyricism?) with clarity. Above is from Les Gutman's monthly report from DC where the play is currently running in Washington. And here, for Amazon.com customers, his final paragraph: While most plays are probably better seen than read, I'm inclined to think this one may be a good one to enjoy on the page as well. The poetry is too good to experience only in passing. I am ordering an inexpensive copy of it. To read his whole review and check out the many other features at CurtainUp, the New York City based Internet magazine of theater reviews and related features.

The Darker Face of the Earth is a wonderful book. It keeps the reader on the edge of his seat. The play is based on the well know Greek story of Oedipus, so it makes the story easier to follow for the reader. Even though you know what will happen in the end of the story it is still surprisingly suspenseful. There are many more actions in this play that lead up to the conclusion than in Oedipus, which adds to the enjoyment of reading this book. The Darker Face of the Earth is an excellent mix of the tangles of a mother and son caught in their sins, and the hardships of slavery. The play is a quick read and I recommend it to anyone who has a free hour or two, because once you start reading this book you will not be able to put it down.

In a speech before the Organization of American Historians, scholar Jacquelyn Dowd Hall offered a window onto "the long civil rights movement" -- a struggle for human rights, economic and social citizenship, and human dignity that began long before Brown v. Board of Education and continued long after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

In her pathbreaking book, Defying Dixie, professor Glenda Gilmore gives texture and character to the long civil rights movement, using indigenous southern activists, black and white, to give her story shape. These activists, from the fearless and foolhardy Lovett Fort-Whiteman to the brilliant and indomitable Pauli Murray, all faced the demon of American white supremacy and did their best to slay it. They did not always prevail with strategies they dreamed up and pursued, but their vision and dedication bequeathed us a social movement, more expansive than the classic civil rights movement, that still informs drives for justice and equity.

Gilmore's book moves beyond the tired debates of Cold War historiography and the simple hagiography of civil rights heroes to give us a dynamic movement filled with complex characters. In giving these people their due, and rooting them in American soil, Defying Dixie helps us to understand the promise and possibilities of American politics, and to contend with the present in which we live.

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore's DEFYING DIXIE: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919 - 1950 is the history of the civil rights movement from that time until the early 1950s. It gives inside history, interviews and information on how the Civil Rights movement that we are aware of today, came about. In the beginning, the Communist party was deeply involved. Their plan was to get the workers of America - black and white - to fight for better salaries from the companies they worked for. The only way to accomplish that was to get the two groups to work together. Naturally, the South, with its legacy of slavery, wasn't too happy with the mixing of the races. The companies, to keep their profits high, wanted to continue to pay blacks less than they paid whites and the only way to do that was to keep them separate. Many residents of the South didn't want blacks involved in the job market because they felt it would reduce their ability to have those jobs. There were, however, many people, of both races, who were determined that segregation/Jim Crow, would end. They were brave enough to defy the system and as a result, they frequently ended up in jail or worse.

During the Second World War, as Stalin took power, the involvement of the Communist party began to lose its appeal. The House Un-American Activities became concerned and the FBI spied on Communist and suspects. Any contact with a Communist could cause problems. It didn't stop those who were determined to force America to honor what it claimed it went to war for, from pushing their agenda for social and economic equality for all, even though many of them suffered for it.

Gilmore has written a heart rending account that covers history that is either missing or glossed over in our history books. So often we don't know the brutal history that brought us where we are today and Gilmore lets us know in no uncertain terms. Some of the unfair situations that blacks face will break your heart. It is a book every American should read in order to understand where we have come from and where we are going. It should be required reading for both high school and college students.

Reviewed by Alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

The 1898 "race riot," of Wilmington, NC, which more correctly should be understood for what it really was, "an ongoing white pogrom against blacks," or "a white supremacist insurrection against a legitimately elected interracial government," remains an enduring metaphor for how, "at every appropriate opportunity throughout American history," white Americans have, even today, found ways to betray democracy in the name of the dying ideology of white supremacy. America's imperceptibly slow evolution towards democracy has been nothing if not an uphill struggle against the reactionary forces of "white resistance" to "true democracy."

Never was the white intent to resist change towards democracy, social and political justice and equality, more raw, open and obvious, never more starkly and conscientiously used to snuff out democracy, nor more brutal, than in the 1898 Wilmington "white vigilante resurrection." And for those who might think that this was but an accident or aberration of American history, the attacks on the duly elected government of Wilmington were typical of the times. As always, they rallied the anti-democratic forces to action in the local churches. Even today, the white instigators of the 1898 riots are still very much revered: taught about in schools as heroes, with statutes of them standing tall in the town square.

Unlike today, when the U.S. has become little more than a "greater co-prosperity sphere" for the "moneyed (mostly) foreign interests of the global economy" such as the Saudi Royal family, Christian and Jewish Zionists, and now for Communist Chinese economic expansion, there was once a time, when "true democracy" was about to break out in America. Never was there a more pregnant time for it to do so than in 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina.

The Story

More than a century ago, in the aftermath of the "race riots" of 1871 in Cape Fear North Carolina, where the river ran red with the blood of its black victims, a historic experiment in interracial democracy blossomed in Wilmington, NC. Although Wilmington was composed of a thriving black majority, one of the few in all of the U.S. at that time (and now at any time), its government nevertheless was composed of a coalition of both races.

This coalition of "working level" blacks and whites, an unheard of democratic oasis in a desert of southern racist reaction, posed a threat not just to white supremacy, but also to the "Southern planter and Northern industrial class" that had traditionally run the Southern slave system that "pitted" white workers against "black slaves." [The global economy now carries out a similar program, writ large.]

In the 1898 elections, when these conservative forces failed to undo the interracial coalition at the ballot box, they sought to do so by "the gun." (giving a paradoxical twist and echo to Malcolm X's refrain: The Ballot or the Bullet). And out of the ashes of the ensuing coup d'etat was born a century of Jim Crow and Apartheid, American style.

And as Paul Harvey would say "the rest of the story" is that even today, when we have both a "Black man" and a "White woman" running for the U.S. Presidency, just beneath the veneer of racial tranquility, America remains more like "post riot Wilmington" than like the interracial coalition that the reactionary vigilante forces overthrew in 1898.

As the authors noted so carefully in the preface: " the past seems not to have receded significantly, even today. In some very fundamental ways, change [towards democracy] has come slowly, sometimes almost imperceptibly [so]."

An important book with many perceptive and cautionary lessons for our still racially tense and constipated times. A true five star effort.



An important book with many perceptive and cautionary lessons for our still racially tense and constipated times. A true five star effort.

First let me say that I rarely read non-fiction and even when I do, I rarely manage to finish an entire book of it. Democracy Betrayed is an exception. The writing was clear, precise, right-on, and interesting. And, perhaps most importantly, educational. I was born and raised in North Carolina and knew nothing--absolutely nothing--about the Wilmington Race Riots or the subject of Cecelski's essay Abraham Galloway. I am female and was a victim of gender based racial violence myself so I was aware of the issues raised in Gilmore's essay and White's essay, but I have never seen the issues written about so well. What I most like about this book is that it destroys stereotypes about class and race. After all isn't it the most well-to-do who most benefit from race violence so why should we be surprised to learn that it was not the so-called "white trash" who began the racial massacre in 1898, but the rich, the ones who were most likely to benefit from forcing the elected fusionist party officials out of office and placing themselves in their offices. I never knew--it certainly wasn't taught in my public school--that in 1896 every office in North Carolina was held by a progressive fusionist party member, elected by the fusion of lower class whites and blacks. Imagine how different this state would be, how advanced in talent and intelligence, if the massacre hadn't occurred, if black doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, newspaper editors and writers, etc, hadn't been forced from the state and if the elected officials had been allowed to remain in office. Perhaps what is most important is the book succeeds in "drawing public attention to the tragedy", a tragedy that is apparantly very much in the consciousness of Black Wilmington citizens and very much needs to be in the consciousness of all humans.