A two-part investigative series written by Arkansas Black Vitality Publisher Wesley Brown for Civil Eats, an independent, nonprofit digital news and commentary site about the American food system, was recently selected by publishing giant HarperCollins for The Best Food Writing 2023. The 320-page book was released on Oct. 17 and is now available in paperback online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, Books-A-Million, IndieBound and other cyber booksellers. 

The yearly anthology is a collection of the year’s top food writing, selected by prolific food writer and author of “How to Cook Everything,” Mark Bittman.

 “In almost any culture, at any time, you can find food writing,” writes Bittman in his introduction. “Food means growing and hardship, and health and medicine, and work and holiday. In its abundance it is a gift and a joy, and in its absence a curse and a tragedy. If a culture has writing, that culture has food writing.” 

According to Harper Collins, “The stories in this year’s Best American Food Writing are brilliant, eye-opening windows into the heart of our country’s culture. From the link between salt and sex, to Syrian refugees transforming ancient Turkish food traditions, to the FDA’s crusade on alternative non-dairy milk options, to Black farmers in Arkansas seeking justice, the scope of these essays spans nearly every aspect of our society. This anthology offers an entertaining and poignant look at how food shapes our lives and how food writing shapes our culture.” 

Brown’s 8,000-word series, entitled “Black Farmers in Arkansas Still Seek Justice a Century After the Elaine Massacre,” chronicles the “long shadow of systemic racism” that continues to harm generations of Black agricultural communities in the Arkansas Delta that face entrenched economic obstacles to success,” according to the subtitle.

According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the U.S. Although the exact number is unknown, estimates of the number of African Americans killed by whites have ranged into the