{"id":8858,"date":"2018-10-03T12:09:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T16:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/?p=8858"},"modified":"2018-10-03T12:09:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T16:09:01","slug":"a-discussion-of-edna-lewis-with-dr-sara-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/2018\/10\/03\/a-discussion-of-edna-lewis-with-dr-sara-franklin\/","title":{"rendered":"A Discussion of Edna Lewis with Dr. Sara Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The food and words of Edna Lewis provoke \u201ca church experience,\u201d asserted Dr. Sara B. Franklin in last night\u2019s Jacques P\u00e9pin Lecture on her new edited volume Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original<\/em>.\u00a0 This collection of essays, including a contribution from Gastronomy Program Director, Dr. Megan Elias, explores the life and impact of the great Southern chef.<\/p>\n

Franklin opened her lecture by reading an excerpt of Lewis\u2019 essay, \u201cWhat is Southern?<\/a>,\u201d discovered and published posthumously in 2008.\u00a0 She described her own near-sacred experience of encountering this essay in Gourmet magazine, becoming enamored with Lewis as a writer, and immediately cracking open her seminal cookbooks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Others shared their knowledge of and experience with Edna Lewis as chef Barry Maiden\u2019s tastes of Edna Lewis\u2019 spoonbread, skillet scallions, and country ham made their way to lecture attendees.\u00a0 One guest spoke with awe of having visited Lewis\u2019 restaurant in Brooklyn, and having even met the chef when she came into the dining room.<\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019 essay \u201cWhat is Southern?\u201d was published the same year Chef Barry Maiden opened his James Beard Award-winning restaurant, Hungry Mother.\u00a0 The essay served as inspiration to Maiden, a fellow Virginian, as did Lewis\u2019 cookbooks; he described The Gift of Southern Cooking<\/em> as a bible at Hungry Mother.<\/p>\n

In her lecture, Franklin argued that Edna Lewis wrote cookbooks that were subtly and unmistakably political.\u00a0 With recipes for Emancipation Day but not the 4th<\/sup> of July, Lewis insisted on an honest accounting of American history, and demanded the visibility of blackness in Southern cooking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This volume on Lewis is likewise politically contextualized; after the shooting in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, Franklin chose to pursue this book as a political response. Franklin positioned this book as a disruption of the pattern of \u201coverlooking food stories, women\u2019s stories, and black stories.\u201d A thoughtful and timely collection of essays on the life and work of a founding figure of Southern cuisine, this book appropriately asserts the importance of Edna Lewis to the history and present experience of American food.<\/p>\n

Ariana Gunderson is a Master\u2019s student in the Gastronomy Program, studying food memory and writing on arianagunderson.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Jared Kaufman<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The food and words of Edna Lewis provoke \u201ca church experience,\u201d asserted Dr. Sara B. Franklin in last night\u2019s Jacques P\u00e9pin Lecture on her new edited volume Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original.\u00a0 This collection of essays, including a contribution from Gastronomy Program Director, Dr. Megan Elias, explores the life and impact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14539,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15,18,21,22],"tags":[945,946,811],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8863,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8858\/revisions\/8863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}