The linked stories in Mama Said are set in Louisville, Kentucky, a city with a rich history steeped in tobacco, bourbon, and gambling, indulgences that can quickly become gripping and destructive vices.

Features nearly fifty writers from across Appalachia sharing their place-based fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry. Much of the work collected here engages current issues facing the region and the planet and provides readers with insights on the human-nature relationship in an era of rapid environmental change.

Examines the opportunities for and constraints on advancing food sovereignty in the 17 de Abril settlement, a community born out of a massacre of landless Brazilian workers in 1996. Based on fieldwork, David Meek makes the provocative argument that critical forms of food systems education are integral to agrarian social movements' survival.