Gravy: Fall 2021

The Fall 2021 issue of Gravy, the first-ever available for sale via Hub City Press, explores environments—the places, spaces, and communities that offer glimpses into the changing South.

Settings span from school cafeterias, where author Silas House remembers lunch ladies as models of social justice, to restaurants on the Chitlin’ Circuit, which have long brought strangers together, as writer Debra Freeman describes. Author Caleb Johnson explains how a Middle Eastern bakery in the Alabama Black Belt promises a more inclusive future for the region, and writer Chris Jay worries over the evolution of a favorite dive bar. From the perch of a stool, John T. Edge, SFA’s founding director, asks how the spaces we make reflect who we are and want to be.

Gravy further touches soil and water. Scholar and writer Bart Elmore chronicles a chemical past that created our planet’s agricultural futures in his new book Seed Money, excerpted here, while columnist Gustavo Arellano draws parallels between okra and nopales, plants at once beloved and disparaged. SFA’s oral historian Annemarie Anderson reports from Florida’s forgotten coast, documenting hope and new beginnings. People create and recreate environments, as Gravy contributors reveal. Photographer and filmmaker Katina Parker tells of feeding neighbors in need from her yard through a COVID-era mutual aid collection, Feed Durham NC. This issue of Gravy traverses time and space to expose the many environments that make up the South—and invites us to see them anew.
 

In This Issue