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It's a Full Menu's Worth of Far-Reaching Foodie Musings in "My Mother Is a Chicken"

Marcel Proust has his little madeleine cakes. Calvin Trillin has Arthur Bryant's BBQ in Kansas City. And Tulsa-based writer and editor Mark Brown has, well, his mother's bygone fried chicken. Food, for so many of us, is about much more than taste and sustenance, much more than flavors and rations. It's about culture, society, tradition, and practically everything else --- about the past, the seasons, our memories, our loved ones. Food is as basic to the human species as are celebrations, rituals, fingerprints, or dreams. Mark Brown is our guest on this edition of StudioTulsa; he's the managing editor at This Land Press and was formerly, for several years, on the staff at the Tulsa World. He tells us about his new book, an essay collection entitled, for reasons to be made clear over the course of our show today, "My Mother Is a Chicken." It's a series of wide-ranging yet readable meditations --- drawing on historical asides, journalistic sources, personal anecdotes, and well-fed reveries --- that explores not just what food is, in all its natural splendor, and how it happens, in all its culinary glory, but also why it changes, haunts, delights, upsets, and (of course) ultimately defines us. (You can learn more about this book, and can also buy a copy, at this link from the This Land website.)

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