This work was presented at the 2019 MLA panel titled "Southern Foodways: Textual Transactions and Regional Food Writing" I. Introduction: Place/Food/Music as Cultural Objects Black artists from the U.S. South have virtually always perceived food as a particular marker of southern authenticity and blackness. From Ellison’s Invisible Man being comforted by the sweetness of a yam on the streets of Harlem (“I yam what I yam!”) to Kevin Young’s more contemporary “Ode to Grits” (“L