Consuming Memories: Food and Childhood in Postbellum Plantation Memoirs and Reminiscences

Abstract

The nostalgia created by and within postbellum plantation memoirs and reminiscences has been little explored. Through scrutinizing the usefulness of nostalgia as a lens through which to focus critical thinking on the construction, uses, and maintenance of individual and collective memory, this article uses this genre of autobiographical life writing to outline assumptions about the Old South plantation imaginary, its kitchens and cooks, as well as the presentation of food and its preparation. By exploring the ways in which memories of food and happy childhood days were used to codify nostalgic forms of the antebellum era, the article contends that food played an important symbolic role in framing and reflecting power relations and patriarchal authority as the Old South gave way to the New.

Keywords:

• American south
• memoirs
• reminiscences
• nostalgia
• food
• childhood