Getting Something to Eat in Jackson, Joseph C. Ewoodzie, Jr.
Getting Something to Eat in Jackson, Joseph C. Ewoodzie, Jr.
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Getting Something to Eat in Jackson
Race, Class, and Food in the America South

Author: Joseph C. Ewoodzie, Jr.

Narrator: Beresford Bennett

Unabridged: 10 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/05/2021


Synopsis

A people-driven ethnography that portrays how race, particularly Blackness, is experienced and performed in different socioeconomic contexts in the contemporary urban American South.

There once was a time when Black Americans up and down the socioeconomic ladder lived in and around the same neighborhoods. Part of this was a consequence of racially discriminatory federal, state, and city housing policies, such as exclusionary Federal Housing Authority practices and racially restrictive deeds and covenants, which prevented those who had the financial means from living anywhere else. Today, many of these neighborhoods are now centers of concentrated poverty. The ones who are able have left; those who remain do so only with others who are poor like them and are unable to leave. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson, a people-driven ethnography, portrays how race, particularly Blackness, is experienced and performed in different socioeconomic contexts in the contemporary urban American South.

The author argues that Black American life is splintered along class lines, using food and eating as a thread as he is moving through the various socioeconomic groups. This book’s overarching goal is to illustrate that there is a paradox in social mobility for Black Americans. On the one hand, the upwardly mobile enjoy some socioeconomic gains, but they never escape neighborhoods because their very sense of self is tied to Blacks in poverty. On the other hand, the ones who are left behind bear the harshest brunt of nearly all measures of inequality in the country, but they retain the symbolisms of Blackness. The book challenges persistent homogenizations of Blackness, draw out the consequences for continuing to do so, and point to the usefulness of recognizing class variation in Black American life.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sean on April 05, 2022

Firstly: I live in Mississippi, and I lived and worked in Jackson, and still have many ties, and more than a few complicated feelings about, the city. I also love pretty much any book, fiction or not, about food. I eat too much. I go out to eat too often. I cook. In my salad days, I did the whole be......more

Goodreads review by Susan on January 12, 2024

I found this book thought provoking and enlightening, as a transplant to Jackson, MS, from Buffalo, NY. Having lived in Jackson for over 30 years, I have met many of the people mentioned in the book, but now see their lives from a different perspective. Also, as an older, white woman, who volunteers......more

Goodreads review by Alexandra on December 23, 2021

Obviously, I was obsessed with this book. Amazing read made even richer by knowing the names, faces, and places being discussed......more

Goodreads review by Kylan on March 07, 2025

I read it for school. It was really interesting but I couldn’t get the motivation to get into it.......more

Goodreads review by Jlnelso on May 14, 2022

I would give this 6 stars if I could. As a sociologist and ethnographer, and one who has lived and worked in Jackson, MS, this read was an immediate interest to me. But the quality of the writing -- the detail he showed in people's days who were in his sample, the effortless dialogue he included, an......more