Date of Award
4-21-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Heritage Studies, Ph.D.
First Advisor
Lauri Umansky
Committee Members
Edward Salo; Robert Lamm
Abstract
Billy Joe Tatum was a naturalist, author, and educator who grew up in Missouri and Arkansas during the 20th century. She is often compared to Euell Gibbons; her book titled Billy Joe Tatum’s Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook was the first of its kind to offer gourmet-style recipes for wild and foraged foods. She wrote many different columns for the Ozarks Mountaineer magazine which was distributed not only in the region but around the United States and internationally. Billy Joe was the first herbalist or “yarb doctor” at the Ozark Folk Center State Park, where she oversaw the first stages of the construction of the Heritage Herb Garden at the center of the state park. She hosted lavish wild foods parties at her home called Wildflower, appeared on Late Night with Johnny Carson among other television shows, and traveled regularly to give lectures on foraging and wild foods. She and her husband Dr. Harold Tatum, moved to Melbourne, AR in 1958, and Dr. Tatum served as the local family practice doctor for the town and county for many years. Billy Joe was well known in the region due not only to her work but her reputation as an eccentric woman who often went barefoot and always wore a buzzard feather in her hair. Billy Joe’s writing style, especially about the natural environment of the Ozarks region is unlike other Ozarks writers and more comparable with nature writers such as Aldo Leopold or Bradford and Vera Angier. Billy Joe created a niche in which she could thrive during the 1960s, 70s, 80s and beyond in the rural Ozarks and surrounded herself with an accepting community of people with similar values and interests. Through her work with wild foods, cooking, and writing about her experiences in nature she negotiated not only her own heritage identity but provided a space for collective identification with heritage foodways and environmental care by educating others, encouraging participation, and through her writings and lectures.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Willette, Lauren Adams, "Habitually "Ant-Eyeing": The Life and Work of Billy Joe Tatum" (2025). Student Theses and Dissertations. 666.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/666
