English Professor's New Book Analyzes 'Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the U.S. South'

Get It While It's Hot: Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the U.S. South, published this month by Louisiana State University Press, brings together scholars, food writers, influencers, and even a CEO to discuss the phenomenon of eating by the side of the road.

This innovative collection, co-edited by Casey Kayser, associate professor of English, examines an increasingly commonplace belief across the U.S. South — that some of the best, most enjoyable food comes from places you would not expect: a gas station, the back of a pickup truck, or a ramshackle building made of plywood.

The two other editors of the book are Shelley Ingram, professor of English and folklore at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Constance Bailey, assistant professor of African American literature and folklore at Georgia State University.

The essays collected look at the delicious food that can be found in such spaces, but also at the ways that gas station, roadside, and convenience cuisine contributes to the social and cultural identities of people and communities in the U.S. South. Sometimes these roadside spaces serve goals of equity and food justice as they relate particularly to race, class, and gender, and sometimes they stymy them. Contributors address the importance of roadside vendors to low-income areas and communities of color, while also revealing how gas stations and convenience stores are particularly prone to anti-Black surveillance and community gatekeeping. Several essays examine the appearance of service stations and unconventional food vendors in southern literature.

The book also includes interviews with photojournalist Kate Medley, author of Thank You, Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South: A Photographic Road Trip (Bitter Southerner, 2023); social media influencer Stafford Shurden, who has drawn in audiences with his Gas Station Tailgate Review series; and Stephanie Stuckey, CEO of iconic roadside convenience store Stuckey's, who all provide firsthand perspectives on the diverse landscapes of food culture in the South. It concludes with an afterword by Psyche A. Williams-Forson, professor and chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America (U of NC Press, 2022), winner of a James Beard Media Award, and Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (U of NC Press, 2006).

By surveying the importance of roadside and convenience cuisine to communities across the region, Get It While It's Hot illustrates that these spaces do not function like typical restaurants. They mark boundaries of community, establish consistency and familiarity, and invite people, sometimes paradoxically, to pull up a chair and sit a while.

LSU Press will be hosting a virtual book launch on Wednesday, April 29, at 2 p.m. CT, which will include a Facebook Live discussion and Q&A featuring Kayser, Ingram, and Bailey.

Kayser is also author of Marginalized: Southern Women Playwrights Confront Race, Region, and Gender (UP of Mississippi, 2021) and two coedited collections on the work of Carson McCullers.