Ewoodzie documents the foodways of Black Mississippians across the economic spectrum, from homeless men and middle-class strivers to single mothers and a mayoral candidate. “This evocative and insightful book reveals how everyday decisions about what and how to eat unite and divide us along lines of race, class, and culture. also offers vitally important insight for food rescue industry service providers and gatekeepers.'-Cassie M. Ewoodzie concludes that food is one of the tools used to construct, refine, and reconstruct racial boundaries.His sobering storytelling. 'What 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’. Joseph Ewoodzie Jr.: “The neighborhood is no longer what it used to be” Ideas Podcast: Getting Something to Eat in Jackson Poverty, pandemic, and peace of mind Throughout, he shows how food choices influence, and are influenced by, the racial and class identities of Black Jacksonians.īy 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.

Ewoodzie also learns about how soul food is changing and why it is no longer a staple survival food. 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 goes food shopping, cooks, and eats with a young mother living in poverty and a grandmother working two jobs. examines how “foodways”-food availability, choice, and consumption-vary greatly between classes of African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi, and how this reflects and shapes their very different experiences of a shared racial identity.Įwoodzie spent more than a year following a group of socioeconomically diverse African Americans-from upper-middle-class patrons of the city’s fine-dining restaurants to men experiencing homelessness who must organize their days around the schedules of soup kitchens. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson uses food-what people eat and how-to explore the interaction of race and class in the lives of African Americans in the contemporary urban South.

Evicted by matthew desmond sparknotes