Gravy Quarterly No. 88

The Summer 2023 issue of Gravy explores the history and diversity of Florida through surprising, joyful, and reflective stories that are attentive to the state’s political moment. In a year when the Southern Foodways Alliance considers the theme, Where is the South?, Gravy stakes a claim for Florida—from inland to coast, conch to mullet, restaurants to juke joints and into home kitchens—as an indisputable part of the region. Rosalind Bentley, Gravy’s deputy editor who is a Tallahassee native and graduate of Florida A&M, brings both her deep Florida knowledge and personal investment in the state to bear as the issue’s guest editor.

Deesha Philyaw remembers family crab boils from her childhood in Jacksonville. Geographer Catarina Passidomo shows that teaching history means teaching uncomfortable truths, even when studying tomatoes. Nadege Green details Bahamaian contributions to the city of Miami through conch fritters and conch salad. Jennifer Greer visits the small Gulf town of Mexico Beach, where restaurants wrestle with decisions about whether and how to rebuild after Hurricane Michael, acknowledging that these questions will only become more frequent with climate change.

Writer Ravi Howard and photographer Colin Hackley take readers into the closing night of a longstanding blues club in a rural area outside of Tallahassee, marking the end of an era. Craig Pittman charts the uncertain future of the citrus industry. Thao Thai tells of growing up with her family in Florida, and her love for an unusual fish species called the spotted sea trout. Scholar Michelle Zacks serves readers mullet, fried and smoked. Dalia Colon interviews a longtime Black cattle rancher in South Florida about how he came to own his land. Leslie Sainz and Emma Trelles, both Cuban American poets born in Miami, share verse. These Gravy pages dive into the many dimensions of Florida—the groups and voices that have a say in what Florida has been, what it is, and what it will be.