Food is more than nutrition. It has so many layers; we must explore them to shift narratives and understand the intersections of food, history, nutrition, and culture. The GRITS Book Club was created with that intent in mind. Every other month, we will read a new book to help us broaden our perspective of food, and after we are all good and full on what we just read, we will meet at the end of the month to engage in facilitated discussion regarding themes in the current book.

Getting Something to Eat in Jackson: Race, Class, and Food in the American South

MEETING DATE: Virtual: May 3rd, 2025 @ 11:00 CST | RSVP FOR ZOOM LINK

Getting Something to Eat in Jackson uses food―what people eat and how―to explore the interaction of race and class in the lives of African Americans in the contemporary urban South. Joseph Ewoodzie Jr. examines how “foodways”―food availability, choice, and consumption―vary greatly between classes of African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi, and how this reflects and shapes their very different experiences of a shared racial identity.

Ewoodzie spent more than a year following a group of socioeconomically diverse African Americans―from upper-middle-class patrons of the city’s fine-dining restaurants to men experiencing homelessness who must organize their days around the schedules of soup kitchens. Ewoodzie goes food shopping, cooks, and eats with a young mother living in poverty and a grandmother working two jobs. He works in a Black-owned BBQ restaurant, and he meets a man who decides to become a vegan for health reasons but who must drive across town to get tofu and quinoa. Ewoodzie also learns about how soul food is changing and why it is no longer a staple survival food. Throughout, he shows how food choices influence, and are influenced by, the racial and class identities of Black Jacksonians.