The Potlikker Papers: John T. Edge Book Talk, Signing, Food Tasting and Benefit for Global Growers

The Potlikker Papers: John T. Edge Book Talk, Signing, Food Tasting and Benefit for Global Growers

Monday, May 22, 2017 7:00 PM

Location:
Highland Inn Ballroom
644 North Highland Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30306

ABOUT THE BOOK
“The one food book you must read this year."

—Southern Living 

A people’s history that reveals how Southerners shaped American culinary identity and how race relations impacted Southern food culture over six revolutionary decades


Like great provincial dishes around the world, potlikker is a salvage food. During the antebellum era, slave owners ate the greens from the pot and set aside the leftover potlikker broth for the enslaved, unaware that the broth, not the greens, was nutrient rich. After slavery, potlikker sustained the working poor, both black and white. In the South of today, potlikker has taken on new meanings as chefs have reclaimed it. Potlikker is a quintessential Southern dish, and The Potlikker Papers is a people’s history of the modern South, told through its food. Beginning with the pivotal role cooks and waiters played in the civil rights movement, noted authority John T. Edge narrates the South’s fitful journey from a hive of racism to a hotbed of American immigration. He shows why working-class Southern food has become a vital driver of contemporary American cuisine.
 
Food access was a battleground issue during the 1950s and 1960s. Ownership of culinary traditions has remained a central contention on the long march toward equality. The Potlikker Papers tracks pivotal moments in Southern history, from the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s to the rise of fast and convenience foods modeled on rural staples. Edge narrates the gentrification that gained traction in the restaurants of the 1980s and the artisanal renaissance that began to reconnect farmers and cooks in the 1990s. He reports as a newer South came into focus in the 2000s and 2010s, enriched by the arrival of immigrants from Mexico to Vietnam and many points in between. Along the way, Edge profiles extraordinary figures in Southern food, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Colonel Sanders, Mahalia Jackson, Edna Lewis, Paul Prudhomme, Craig Claiborne, and Sean Brock. 
 
Over the last three generations, wrenching changes have transformed the South. The Potlikker Papers tells the story of that dynamism—and reveals how Southern food has become a shared culinary language for the nation.

ABOUT THE EVENT

The Potlikker Papers: John T. Edge Book Talk, Signing, Food Tasting and Benefit for Global Growers

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

John T. Edge, award-winning food writer and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, discusses his sweeping new book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South with journalist, author, critic and professor Valerie Boyd.  The conversation is part of a special evening recognizing the ever-evolving food and culture of the region and benefiting an organization at the forefront of that evolution. 

Capacity at the historic in-town venue is limited. Tickets for the evening are $45 and include a signed, first edition copy of Edge's new book and tastings from a number of local eateries, with a portion of the proceeds going to Global Growers, a non-profit working to increase the number of food producers who create access to healthy, sustainably-grown food and also to prepare farmers to be competitive in their local marketplace. 

Online ticket sales have ended, tickets remain available at the door.

If you are unable to attend this event,  you may still pre-order a signed copy below.