(From left) Ronni Lundy, Marcie Cohen Ferris and Sandra A. Gutierrez
The intersection of Latin American and Appalachian foodways in North Carolina will be the subject of the fourth lecture in the UNC-Asheville series Diverse Roots at the Common Table: Culinary Conversations in the American South on Wednesday, March 27, at 6 p.m. Titled Comales and Cornbread: Exploring the New-Southern Latino Table in Appalachia, the roundtable discussion features foodways scholar Marcie Cohen Ferris and cookbook authors Sandra A. Gutierrez and Ronni Lundy—all of whom are “giants in the foodways world,” says Dr. Erica Abrams Locklear, Thomas Howerton Distinguished Professor of Humanities at UNCA. The event will be held in-person at UNCA’s Highsmith Union and will also be livestreamed on the University’s YouTube channel. It is free and open to the public, however in-person attendance requires registration.
“I’m excited to be in conversation with Ronni, Sandra and Erica,” says Ferris. “We each represent different voices of the larger South, and it is an honor to speak from this important food hearth in the mountain South at UNC-Asheville.” A native of Arkansas, Ferris has studied, documented, interpreted and written about the South, particularly its foodways and the southern Jewish experience. She is professor emeritus in the Department of American Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, editor of Southern Cultures and author of The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region.
Journalist, author, food historian and cooking instructor Gutierrez is considered one of the top national experts on Latin American foodways and on southern US regional cuisine. In 2017, she was awarded the prestigious M.F.K. Fisher Grand Prize Award for Excellence in Food Writing and in 2019, her work and culinary objects became part of the permanent exhibit FOOD: Transforming the American Table at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She is the author of many books, including LATINÍSIMO: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America. “Each one of us brings a completely different facet to the conversation,” Gutierrez says. “Together, we will paint a realistic and hopeful picture of what the past gave us and what the future holds.”
Lundy was a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) and the Appalachian Food Summit. She is a recipient of the SFA’s Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award and a winner of the James Beard Book of the Year Award in 2016 for her Appalachian cookbook Victuals. “So much of the diversity of peoples and culture in southern Appalachia has been erased from our history and replaced with stereotypes,” she says. “Looking at the foods we eat and following the stories that they tell gives us a much richer, broader and more truthful history, from the first printed African American cookbook written by a Black Appalachian woman in 1864, to the Italian coal-miner-inspired pepperoni rolls that are today West Virginia’s official state food. I can tell you that I learn something new and important about the foods of NC every time I’m in a room where Marcie or Sandra is sharing her wealth of research and analysis.”
To learn more, register for the in-person event or find the livestream link, visit new.unca.edu and click on Events and News.
