Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing) (2 page)

I was born happily in New Orleans. I was only dragged into the South thirtysome years later unwittingly and uneasily by the Southern Foodways Alliance.

The difficulty was not a matter of geography. One of the advantages of living in New Orleans is that you can hop in a car or on a plane and in a matter
of hours, you've traveled from the northern Caribbean to the southern United
States, from sugarcane to cotton, from crawfish to catfish. Indeed, I had visited the South many times and even spent three years of my youth exiled in
that region's capital, Atlanta. No, the difficulty was a matter of identity, or
more precisely, a matter of navigating the long list of identities available in
America to find that one that best correlated with my own personal set of
idiosyncrasies.

I suppose in those pre-Southern days, I was something of a Creole. Neither
of my parents would embrace the term, but that was no impediment to my
appropriation of the birthright. The Africans and Europeans whose cultures
combined to form Creole identity were often less than wild about their cafe au
lait progeny. Thus the Creole credo has always been that the great, grand
whole is infinitely superior to the sum of the little parental parts. So whenever
there was a North-South debate about culture, sports, or politics, I lofted
above the fray, confident that New Orleans was superior in all matters that
mattered - food, music, architecture, and, of course, attitude. I was a New Orleans nationalist, utterly convinced that my city-state and certain other choice
morsels of southern Louisiana territory should be considered in their own
separate sphere. I believed that certain self-evident truths needed to be reexamined, namely this notion that the American Purchase of the Louisiana
Territory was such a great deal. (While the Americans have profited handsomely from the transaction, try as I might, I have failed to see any advantage
in it for my people.)

In 1998 1 was invited to speak at the second annual Southern Foodways
Alliance symposium. The topic of that year's event was Creolization, and I couldn't wait. We were to talk and learn about the various clashes of cultures
that have created the South. My mouth watered at the prospect of brand new
heathens, freshly unwashed and poised to hear the good news of the Creole
gospel. I was prepared to speak from the subject, "As to Escoffier's Silence in
the Matter of Gumbo." (Though others may consider the matter long settled,
I intended that talk to be a Declaration of Creole Independence from France
in the guise of a paean to my nation's signature culinary perfection.)

I knew I was in trouble when I heard the first speaker, Jessica Harris, Ph.D.
She proceeded to define, dissect, and describe my region and my people in a
series of languages other than English, all of which are crucial to an understanding of Creole identity but none of which I speak. Imagine my amazement to learn that she's native to one of the New York provinces (Queens, I
believe) and scarcely came into contact with Creole civilization until she was
a full-grown adult. Then Ronni Lundy, a Kentuckian, described her homeland, in a talk that was in turns hilarious and touching. She made it clear that
mine isn't the only distinct area joined by geography and fate to the American
South. She also rendered it utterly impossible for me to toss around the word
"hillbilly" with any confidence that the epithet will neither hit nor hurt anyone of consequence.

The Southern Foodways Symposium is held in the heart of Dixie, at Ole
Miss, the rebel university that sought to insure that the twentieth century
would never darken its door. That place captured the otherness of the South
for me. Its history epitomized the South I had no wish to belong to. But much
about it was familiar: Leah Chase finding a Catholic sanctuary in that Baptist
town and attending mass Saturday afternoon; Kathleen Purvis inviting us to
come by her room for a little Kentucky cognac so that we might be properly
fortified for the ten-block walk to the place where the festivities awaited. That
year, I was converted to John Egerton's vision of the South and the Southern
Foodways Alliance's role in it.

His book, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil
Rights Movement in the South, chronicles the prehistory of his ideal. He will
detail this philosophy from the podium, but he articulates it best for you at
Ajax Diner or Off Square Books after he has feasted well in the company of old
friends and we have all drunk deeply from the Jack Daniels bottle. He will tell
you that ours is a large table stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Washington, D.C., from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mexican border. He will tell you that
this coming together at our table and the breaking of our various breads is an
act of defiance. It is a speaking now, mouth full and spirit nourished, against
the days when certain feet, those deemed too dark or too dirty, were violently separated from this supper. He will tell you that this fried chicken, these sweet
potato pies are related to regular food in much the same way as communion
hosts are related to regular white bread.

And even if he doesn't say it that way, you will hear it that way.

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