Humble Pie: Stories of Biscuits, Backbone, and Becoming, by Cindy Sams

Prose, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Humble Pie: Stories of Biscuits, Backbone, and Becoming is a memoir-in-miniature that explores the grit and grace of growing up in a Southern kitchen under the watchful eye of a formidable grandmother. Told through a series of flash essays, the collection blends food, memory, and wit to reveal the quiet survival tactics of a girl raised on skillet suppers and tough love. Each chapter serves up more than just meals—it dishes out lessons in resilience, belonging, and the complicated inheritance of Southern womanhood.

With titles like “Gospel Bird,” “Salad and Sustenance,” and “A Baker’s Dozen,” these bite-sized narratives invite readers to the table, where mayonnaise counts as dressing and silence speaks volumes. Through tender and unflinching prose, the narrator charts a course from scarcity to selfhood, from fried chicken to hard truths, all the while honoring the flawed woman who fed her soul as much as her belly. Humble Pie is a story of making do, growing up, and learning to savor what remains.

Cindy Sams is a Southern writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from Reinhardt University. Her work has appeared in Brevity Nonfiction Blog, Pangyrus, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, The Plentitudes, The Blue Mountain Review, and The New Southern Fugitives, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. Drawing from a childhood steeped in biscuits, backbone, and bold women, she writes personal essays that blend food, memory, and the complexities of family. She lives in Macon, Georgia, where she continues to write about the people and places that shaped her.