Kaitland Byrd’s Real Southern Barbecue is not your Grandpappy’s nostalgia for the joys of chopped pork. Byrd recognizes that barbecue restaurants must operate on the illusion of authenticity – the idea of the rural South. However, she also realizes insightfully, surprisingly, and crucially that in the 21st Century, these establishments must meld tradition with contemporary values. Increasingly BBQ shacks must be healthy, environmentally-friendly, socially conscious, and operating within a modern economy. The balance is not always easy or comfortable. Relying on interviews with pitmasters, Byrd delights in puncturing our culturally-set illusions about Southern foodways. I was startled and delighted by Byrd’s refusal to accept the myth of unchanging ‘cue.

Gary Alan Fine, Northwestern University, author of “Everyday Genius: The Culture of Authenticity in Self-Taught Art”

In its best moments, Real Southern Barbecue reads as half ethnography, half psychological profile. The index lists more than 100 oral history participants across the South, and Byrd does a masterful job in the middle chapters of exploring her subjects’ words in the context of authenticity creation…. I wish I had read Real Southern Barbecue as an undergrad American studies student all those years ago. Byrd’s measured but insightful presentation of oral history does important work in illuminating the voices of a group figuring out how best to survive a new era. By doing so, she reminds her reader that no culture or cultural product, however revered, is ever static. Barbecue plays an important role in Southern culture across lines of race, income, gender, and background; it is a gathering food. As such, its evolution and the evolution of its secret-keepers are reflections of our changing world, for better or for worse.

Journal of American Folklore