Much to Carry: Remembering My Mother’s Catfish Stew

“She was a genius, I’ve come to recognize, at recasting defeats as glorious spectacles. Faced with small-town ignorance, fearful of what small-town boredom might wrest from her, she did her best to divert and subvert. Looking back, I see my best self in her flagrancy. And I glimpse what my worst self might have nurtured, had the darker times in Clinton defined my life.” —John T. Edge, "My Mother’s Catfish Stew" For this video, filmmaker Ethan Payne interviewed John T. Edge about his childhood in Georgia, preparing to send his son to college, and his mother’s catfish stew. Special thanks to The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts for supporting the making of this film. Produced with funding from The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts: http://juliachildfoundation.org/ Co-produced by Ethan Payne: http://www.ethanpayne.com/ Read “My Mother’s Catfish Stew” by John T. Edge in the Fall 2019 issue of the Oxford American. For more information, visit http://www.oxfordamerican.org/