If you live in the South, you are often a very short distance from a garden, or even a farm owned by your family or by your neighbor's family. When I was a child, even though I grew up in an era of highly processed food, the grocery store sold local field peas, lima beans, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes. While there is a deep sense of place in the South - and the foods of this place - I don't want to present a pastoral vision of the contemporary South. The majority of Southerners cannot access fresh, local, affordable food.

The core cuisine of Southern food is established in the plantation South, within the world of slavery. To understand the plantation table, we must understand the relationship of enslaved people to Africa, to historical trauma, and their central role in food production. Their voice is the most poignant, expressive voice in Southern cuisine.

While I felt very much a Southerner as a child, being Jewish gave me an outsider's perspective. People look at region in a variety of ways, and I always paid attention to food. Food rises above other things for me. From a young age, I saw food as a barometer of cultural identity, and I was fascinated by how people defined themselves through their food traditions.

Southern food derives its strength from many cultures. It's a melding of food cultures from Native Americans, enslaved African-Americans, and Europeans.

Historically, women's voices were central to food narratives, yet they were marginalized, and what happened at the table, the kitchen, the garden, and the fields was silenced. I'm very interested in how food appears in the historical record and animates our understanding of the South. It provides texture both to the past and to our contemporary experience. My work is not about discovering new voices, but rather it encourages voices that have been silenced to come forward and speak a little louder.

If you live in the South, you are often a very short distance from a garden, or even a farm owned by your family or by your neighbor's family. When I was a child, even though I grew up in an era of highly processed food, the grocery store sold local field peas, lima beans, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes. While there is a deep sense of place in the South - and the foods of this place - I don't want to present a pastoral vision of the contemporary South. The majority of Southerners cannot access fresh, local, affordable food.

Southern food that appears in contemporary popular culture is so exaggerated that it's hardly recognizable to most Southerners. This enriching of Southern food - fatter, richer, more over the top - is what we typically see on TV, in Hollywood films, and in Southern-style or country-themed chains like Cracker Barrel. Southern food becomes a caricature, like characters and props in a reality TV show.