Book Fight

This week we read an essay from The Oxford American co-written by John T. Edge and Tunde Wey, "Who Owns Southern Food?" The piece was inspired, in part, by an article in Eater called "How Gullah Cuisine Transformed Charleston Food," which created a bit of a firestorm in Charleston, sparking debate about the economics of cultural appropriation. 

All of which is a bit afield of what we normally discuss on the show, though it sparked a lot of conversation, and dovetailed with a number of issues we've both been thinking about, as of late, about race and politics.

Oh, and we eat some snacks, since that's our deal lately. Our first-ever homemade snack (cheese grits!), plus Tastykakes, and some Middleswarth chips (the secret ingredient is MSG).

Direct download: Ep155_Fall16_Gullah.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we welcome guest Sam Allingham (author of The Great American Songbook) to discuss the South Korean novel The Vegetarian, which won the Man Booker International Prize. We also talk about Sam's story collection, which recently came out from A Strange Object, and we subject him to our usual tomfoolery. 

As will be obvious within the first few seconds of this episode, we recorded it before the recent presidential election. If you don't want to hear our dumb election jokes, just skip the first minute or so, and then enjoy an election-free discussion with Sam.

Thanks for listening!

Direct download: Ep154_Kang_TheVegetarian.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

A listener sent us a big box of Canadian snacks, so we're devoting this episode to our friendly neighbor to the north. We're talking about an Alice Munro story, "Family Furnishings," and specifically how Munro uses food and eating to characterize family members and the relationships between them. 

In the second half of the show, we dig into those snacks! Ketchup-flavored potato chips. Smarties (of the chocolate variety). Hickory sticks. And some thing called a King Turk that may have scarred us for life.

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

Direct download: Ep153_Fall16_CanadaSpecial.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

You may know the name Kinsella from the Kevin Costner character Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams. But it's also the name of the author who wrote the novel, Shoeless Joe, on which that movie was based. Kinsella was born in Canada, and lived most of his life there, though he did a stint at the Iowa Writers Workshop, near where the book is set. He wrote several other novels, and a bunch of short story collections, most of which dealt with either baseball or First Nations people, another passion of his. Kinsella recently passed away, and so it seemed like an appropriate time for us to finally read his most famous book.

For more, you can visit us online at bookfightpod.com

Direct download: Ep152_ShoelessJoe.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

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