This month's Esquire has a willfully ignorant piece by Iraq war veteran, blogger, and writer Colby Buzzell about the Mississippi Delta Tamale Trail.

All the piece does is reinforce the worst kind of racial, regional, and cultural stereotyping that occasionally still goes on when "serious" writers deign to write about things like barbecue and tamales and fried chicken.

Southern Foodways Alliance oral historian Amy Evans of Southern Foodways's Tamale Project had this to say in response to Buzzell's piece:

While it's impossible for this guy to have missed our project online—or anywhere—and unprofessional and unwise to not make the slightest mention of us and our Tamale Trail, the thing that gets me the most is his portrayal of the Delta. This guy obviously did not spend enough time there. The openness, generosity, and warmth that my friends along the Tamale Trail have shown us, our project, and the people who eat their tamales cannot be ignored. What's more, these people are dedicated to making handcrafted food from recipes that are generations old. And they're out there making an honest living. And their tamales are incredible! The tamales, the Delta, and the people are far more complicated—and interesting and smart and wonderful—than this article gives credit.

John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and a terrific wordsmith who often writes about Southern food, was a little more blunt.

This guy is a potshot-taker who styles himself a stranger-in-a-strange world chronicler of queer foods and the people whoe make and eat queer foods. We Southerners are used to his kind, used to seeing them come our way, looking for a place and a people that are benighted and butt-sprung. He obviously worked very hard to find what he was looking for. And in the process he exposed himself as the very worst kind of cultural prostitute.

Besides all the above-mentioned problems, Buzzell never tells you how delicious the Delta tamales are. I know. I have downed 20 in a tamale-filled touring day of the Mississippi Delta. The following places ship.

Ervin's Hot Tamales
Address: 3789 Hemphill Road, Sledge MS 38670
Phone: 662-363-3535

Hicks World Famous Tamales and More
Address: 305 South State Street, Clarksdale MS 38614
Phone: 662-624-9887

The Ranchero
Address: 1907 North State Street, Clarksdale MS 38614
Phone: 662-624-9768

Teal's Onward Store
Address: Interesection of Highway 61 and Highway 1, Onward MS 39159
Phone: 662-873-6804

Solly's Hot Tamales
Address: 1921 Washington Street, Vicksburg MS 39180
Phone: 601-636-2020

Photograph from tamaletrail.com