“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, author, Bunch of Amateurs

“To read Potlikker is to understand modern Southern history at a deeper level than you're used to. Not just a history of Southern food; it also stands as a singularly important history of the South itself." The Bitter Southerner

Beginning with the pivotal role of cooks in the civil rights movement, John T. Edge narrates the region’s journey from a hive of racism to a hotbed of American immigration, tracing how the food of working class Southerners has become a signature of American cuisine.

Restaurants were battlegrounds during the civil rights movement. Access to food and ownership of traditions were key contentions on the long and fitful march toward racial equality. The Potlikker Papers begins in 1955 as black cooks and maids fuelled the Montgomery bus boycott and it concludes in 2015 as a newer South came into focus, enriched by the arrival of immigrants from Mexico, Vietnam, and many points in between.

Along the way, The Potlikker Papers tracks the evolution of Southern identity, from the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s that began in the Tennessee hills to the rise of fast and convenience foods modeled on Southern staples. Edge narrates the gentrification that gained traction in North Carolina and Louisiana restaurants of the 1980s and the artisanal renaissance that reconnected farmers and cooks in the 1990s and 2000s.

Wrenching changes transformed the South over the last two generations. During that same span, Southerners transformed America. The Potlikker Papers interprets these shifts in beliefs and identities, revealing how Southern food has become a shared culinary language for the nation.

Named one of the best books of the year by NPR and Publishers Weekly!