ABSTRACT
Since the mid-nineteenth century, popular publications about Appalachia have largely contributed towards a narrative that depicts the area and its people as backward, simplistic, and lacking in culture. These short stories and travel accounts are particularly invested in encouraging a belief that the region is homogeneous at its best and dangerously untamed at its worst. As activist Elizabeth Catte has explained, these detrimental portrayals are often created by external perspectives for the consumption of outside audiences: “Defining Appalachian culture is often a top-down process, in which individuals with power or capital tell us who or what we are.” In other words, Appalachia’s historical past and contemporary present have been constructed primarily by and for outsiders, which has produced long-standing social and economic consequences within the region. Locals, however, are actively working to rewrite their stories and resist understandings of place that continue to essentialize and silence Appalachian voices.
Ronni Lundy’s Victuals is one such contribution to a region-wide project that seeks to highlight Appalachia’s diverse history and bright future. Her text not only includes mouth-watering recipes but also focuses on the need to view food as evidence of rich, deep-rooted regional traditions and shared community experiences. In order to impart a more authentic impression of Appalachia, Lundy structures this literary cookbook so that readers are encouraged to consume the region in a different way, one that is communal and culturally conscious. Each chapter focuses on a certain ingredient or type of cooking and is prefaced by extensive opening sections that link the history of particular dishes to the local people who continue to prepare and innovate them. The voices and foods that she selects in these introductory narratives are diverse and paint a picture of Appalachia that is anything but homogeneous. Her recipes emerge from Native American, African American, Italian, and Scottish-Irish practices, to name but a few, and the contemporary cooks that she features are not unbendingly traditional but prefer instead to play with certain dishes in a way that highlights the region’s hybridity. These stories also emphasize an alternative relationship with the land that recognizes a respect for the natural world and promotes sustainable cooking practices. For Lundy, food is not merely a source of personal enjoyment but a tool by which she can reveal the “connections between earth and the table, and between the table and the people seated around it.” Victuals thus functions as both a cookbook and a story of resistance that pushes audiences to reconsider how they consume and construct narratives about places and the people who call them home.
