Digest: A Journal of Foodways & Culture 7:2 (2019-2020): 165-166      © American Folklore Society 2021 

Review of: 
 

Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance 

 
Review by: Sarah T. Shultz 

____________________________________________________________ 
 
Vinegar & Char is an anthology of verse about Southern food. The volume 
commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), an 
academic organization that studies and documents the various foods and food cultures 
of the American South. Since poetry is a subjective medium not every line in the 
collection will speak to each reader, however these works illuminate the spectrum of 
human experiences in the American South using foodways as a prism. Some poems use 
a combination of lyricism and contrast to capture the feeling of experiencing the 
agricultural past and more industrialized present of the region simultaneously, while 
others focus on sensory details to illustrate how taste and texture connect us to specific 
moments. 

 
In the Introduction, editor Sandra Beasley suggests that the goals of SFA, and by 
extension of the collection, are to widen ideas of what constitutes Southern food, and 
approach the subject with respect and an eye towards acknowledging and bridging 
economic, racial, and ethnic divides that have long characterized the region. Ralph W. 
Eubanks builds on these ideas in the Foreword, identifying grappling with history 
without falling into oversimplified nostalgia as a major concern of the collection. 
 
If the two major goals of Vinegar & Char are to create a more inclusive, multivocal 
South, and to simultaneously celebrate the pleasures and confront the pains of its past 
without oversimplifying either dimension, it succeeds in meeting these goals. While it 
would be impossible to represent every lived experience of the American South today in 
this collection, Beasley has put together a truly dynamic, nuanced portrait of the South 
that acknowledges both its past and present diversity. Despite the slimness of the 
volume, there is ample space in these pages for fond looks back at family and 
community traditions, honest critiques of slavery, intolerance, and economic inequality, 
and many other perspectives that fall along this spectrum. However, the absence of 
context for the poems or information about how or why they were selected could present 
difficulties for readers looking to use this book as a primary research source. The poems 
are organized into three sections, but there is very little information given on how 
specific poems were chosen beyond the fact that many have been previously featured in 
SFA publications. There is no discussion of how the themes were chosen and organized. 

 
Section I explores the gathering and preparation of Southern food. Processing food for 
consumption is explored on an individual, intimate scale, in the shucking of an oyster or 
the slaughtering of a pig, as well as within the larger historical and social contexts of 
slavery and migrant labor. Section II investigates the connection between food and 
relationships. The poems use food as a metaphor to explore romantic love, friendship, 
family ties, employee and employer relationships, small and large communities, and the 



    Shultz, Review, Vinegar & Char      Digest: A Journal of Foodways & Culture 7:2 (2019-2020) 

 
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connections between humans and the natural world. Because relationships take center 
stage in this section, the food itself occasionally fades into the background. While this 
slipping in and out of focus is an accurate representation of food’s place in Southern 
culture, readers interested in exploring its symbolic functions in Southern daily life and 
history may find this section less fruitful for analysis. The poems of Section III are 
concerned with the different ways that food connects people with one another. While 
some entries celebrate these connections, others test the limits of food’s ability to create 
a sense of communitas by illuminating food’s role in systems of inequality. 
 
The Contributor Notes section could be an excellent resource for scholars looking for 
contemporary works of poetry dealing with foodways of the American South. But if there 
were also a section in which more context was provided on the content of the poems and 
their intended purpose within the collection as a whole, it might prove helpful for 
researchers working on long-term projects or professors looking to integrate these 
verses into syllabi for food studies courses. The collection may not be a perfect resource 
for foodways scholars, but its entries can be used in a number of ways. Specific poems 
could be paired with scholarly sources to provide a more varied learning experience for 
students in introductory foodways courses, for example; researchers doing fieldwork on 
Southern foodways could share poems from the collection with interviewees to facilitate 
discussion. 
 
While Vinegar & Char may present certain challenges for foodways scholars looking to 
integrate it into research projects or course curricula, as a collection of poetry it soars. 
The poems illustrate various ways in which food, frequently characterized as everyday 
and trivial, can inspire a lyrical response. Food inspires poetry because it is linked to 
memory, identity, and the landscapes we inhabit and dream about. The works selected 
in Vinegar & Char depict the South beautifully and realistically. There is something here 
for everyone who is interested in the connections between food, place, and identity.  


	Review of:
	Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance
	Review by: Sarah T. Shultz