Ernest Matthew Mickler also wrote the White Trash Cook Book. Both of these could have been condescending, mean-spirited takes on the food habits of the working poor. Certainly the names of these books would lend credence to the belief that that's what one would find in them. And I bought them because they looked amusingly kitsch-filled. But I was wrong. This isn't kitsch. Mickler loved these people. He had affection for their food. This was the written equivalent of the field recordings made of rural musics by Alan Lomax and his father. Mickler was preserving these artifacts, this ephemera. I wish he hadn't died. I think he was just getting started. He died in 1988 of AIDS - the day after this book was published.

There's a wonderful article about the books here: http://www.oxfordamericanmag.com/content.cfm?ArticleID=46&Entry=Extras ( )