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America Eats essays edited by Mark Kurlansky
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“America Eats” was conceived as a collection of socially and anthropologically relevant essays about food throughout the United States. Despite millions of words written and presented, “America Eats” was never published and moldered away in the Library of Congress. Bestselling author of “Cod” and “Salt,” Mark Kurlansky poured through the files and wrote the “The Food of a Younger Land,” published on May 14, 2009 by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group.
The premise for Kurlansky’s collection of essays is, “a portrait of American food before the national highway system – before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation’s food was seasonal, regional, and traditional – from the lost Works Project Administration files.” Author’s tour schedule and biography are available at the publisher’s website.
Recently reading the food section of newspapers, culinary magazines and food bloggers confirms that the United States (and many other countries) have returned to these same themes. Today, Alice Waters, owner/chef of Chez Panisse in San Francisco is hailed as the reigning queen of seasonal and regional cuisine and her many disciples pepper the country.
Simmering along the surface of extraordinary unemployment figures in the 21st century - growing daily - is the memory of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as an outshoot of the 1935 Emergency Relief Act. A public works program, the WPA created a Blue-collar workforce to construct government projects.
During the Depression, which our present economic turmoil echoes, the Emergency Relief Act also launched a nation-wide program creating gainful employment for artists, writers, entertainers, musicians and actors including The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP).
Journalist, foreign correspondent and Columbia Law School graduate Henry Alsberg was the Director of the FWP and authored the eligibility guidelines; no money, no job, no property, literate and able to type and deliver copy (content). This moved relief from the streets into the office and put more than 4,500 writers to work. Many internationally acclaimed authors were included in this group including Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, Zora Neale Hurston and John A. Lomax.
Kurlansky has divided the book into the very same sections as the original “America Eats” project including the Northeast, South, Middle West, Far West and the South West. His introduction brings the reader through the creation of the WPA and the FWP along with the dividing lines of race and gender. “It is rare to find this kind of untouched paper trail into the past,” writes Kurlansky. Reading this collections awakens the appetite for regional cuisine, teases forth childhood memories of comfort foods and reminds one that a government can create programs that put people back to work in times of need. Perhaps our current leaders should take a hint or two from Roosevelt.
Many of the authors and essays are introduced by Kurlansky enticing readers into the culture of America’s regions and the struggles of the writers. Nora Zeale Hurston’s exceptional essay, “Diddy-Wah-Diddy” speaks of a mythical land where food appears by magic for the hungry. Her prose paints a picture of an Eden-esque nirvana where a “big baked chicken will come along with a knife and fork stuck in its sides.”
The book is best dipped into reading what strikes one’s taste buds. Selections include Wisconsin Sour-Dough Pancakes cooked at lumber camps; Choctaw Indian Dishes from the Southwest; Divinity Chocolates and Spoon Bread from Kentucky; Rhode Island Johnny Cakes and Long Island Rabbit Stew.
“North Carolina Chitterling Strut” by Katherine Palmer, who wrote about folklore, explores the food preparation of Mehitable and Doak Dorsey. Mehitable cooks up chitlins and her husband welcomes guests who pay “two-bits and twenty-five cents,” for the homemade meal, strutting and chatting.
The essays are anything but stuffy and much of the cuisine is still prepared today. Kurlansky weaves it all together turning what could be a dry accounting of American food into a historical banquet.
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Mark Kurlansky Photo credit: Sylvia Plachy
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