The Southern Skillet (original) (raw)

Reconstructing Southern Rhetoric, 2021

Abstract

Southern food speaks in a central way for the region—organizing identities and differences far better than oratory. In this chapter, Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre turn to the cast iron skillet as itself a metonym for the South. Looking in detail through the historical associations of race, class, and gender, the skillet serves as a valuable reference point for positive and productive conversations about regional identity over time. Reclaiming a positive role for nostalgia, foodways provide a focus on the process, not looking at a region as a “historical problem” to solve, but as an experience to transform through inclusion. Cornbread and other skillet staples become the symbol of transformative space.

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