SOURCE: Hill, Darlene Reimers. “‘Use To, the Menfolks Would Eat First’: Food and Food Rituals in the Fiction of Bobbie Ann Mason.” Southern Quarterly 30, nos. 2–3 (winter–spring 1992): 81–89.

In the following essay, Hill discusses the significance of food in Mason's Shiloh, and Other Stories and In Country. In particular, Hill compares the modern-day meals in Mason's stories to more traditional southern fare, such as that of Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding.

Southerners take their food and how they eat it very seriously. Traditional foods and food rituals are important parts of the southern identity. One would not find traditionalists drinking hot tea with cream instead of coffee for breakfast or steaming coffee for lunch when they could have “ice tea.” These southerners fry their catfish and eat it with hushpuppies; they do not poach fish in dill sauce with a side dish of “pasta.” Simple taste preferences aside, one would...