Hot, Hot Chicken, Rachel Louise Martin
Hot, Hot Chicken, Rachel Louise Martin
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Hot, Hot Chicken
A Nashville Story

Author: Rachel Louise Martin

Narrator: Julienne Irons

Unabridged: 5 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/13/2022

Categories: Nonfiction, Cooking


Synopsis

These days, hot chicken is a "must-try" Southern food. Restaurants in New York, Detroit, Cambridge, and even Australia advertise that they fry their chicken "Nashville-style." Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince's Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish.

But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville's Black neighborhoods—and the story of hot chicken says something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future.

Hot, Hot Chicken recounts the history of Nashville's Black communities through the story of its hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city, through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.

About Rachel Louise Martin

Rachel Louise Martin is a writer and public intellectual. She holds a PhD in women's and gender history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her work has appeared in O Magazine, Oxford American, the Atlantic online, Bitter Southerner, CityLab, and Catapult. She has been featured on the BBC's Food Chain, KCRW's Good Food, and the Michelle Meow Show.


Reviews

Goodreads review by britt_brooke on July 23, 2021

Clever cover/title. While this does center around the Prince’s Hot Chicken story, it’s about 2/3 socioeconomic history of Nashville and it’s post civil war development. Lots of details, but it’s downright fascinating. That said, if you’re not a Nashville native - or a transplant like me - I’m not su......more

Goodreads review by Robin on August 06, 2023

I used to live in Nashville and never heard of “Nashville Hot Chicken” This book explains why that was, and as usual, it all comes down to racism, appropriation, and a dash of sexism. I love books that uncover street- level history- the stuff that doesn’t make the news.......more

Goodreads review by Allison on April 17, 2021

A fascinating view of history and race relations in one Southern town, through the lens of a culinary phenomenon. Nashville Hot Chicken has existed for over 150 years, but it was only after white entrepreneurs “discovered” the dish that he became a worldwide phenomenon. As a frequent visitor to Nash......more

Goodreads review by Stacy on March 21, 2021

Expanding on her essay, "How Hot Chicken Really Happened," Rachel Louise Martin explores the history of hot chicken and the Prince family, but more importantly, the history and ongoing segregation of Nashville's housing and business communities from the Civil War to the March 2020 tornado that rippe......more

Goodreads review by Han on May 03, 2023

This book is the fascinating interwoven story of Nashville, hot chicken, and black history- and after reading this book, I really don’t think you can talk about one of those things without bringing up the other two. This book walks a line between telling the known history of Nashville, it’s segregat......more