This has to be the oddest lede for a story about food — in this case, a meditation on Southern-style layer cake — that I’ve seen in ages. From the current issue of Saveur:

Prior to October 7, 2010, my mother and I were the best of friends. A consummate Southern lady, Judy Mims is a fantastic cook, gossiper, and mom — and in her relationship with me she had always drawn on all those talents. But on that October day, I flew from New York City to my childhood home in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to come out, at 25 years old, as a gay man to m parents. As anyone who grew up in the Bible Belt can imagine, the outcome was heartbreaking. My mother and I used to talk at least weekly; now months go by without a call. I miss her. And I can’t help feeling like I’ve lost touch with not only my mother, but also my lifeline to the world I grew up in. Thank goodness I still have the cakes.

Passive-aggressive journalism at its strangest. It baffles me why discussing the manifold virtues of Southern layer cake requires telling a national readership that Judy Mims of Kosciusko, Miss., is a hateful homophobic bitch. If he’s lucky, the author will come to regret having done this cruel thing.

Years ago, when I was around the same age as this author, I wrote a newspaper article focusing on my mother that inadvertently held her up to ridicule. I didn’t recognize what I was doing at the time, but in retrospect, there was a lot of passive-aggression in that piece. I bitterly regretted it, and asked her forgiveness once I was wise enough to see what I had done. Whatever my problems with my mom at the time, and however wrong I thought she was about things, she did not deserve that kind of treatment, not in public. Neither does Judy Mims, whatever her sins and failings.

I feel sorry for people who have writers in the family, and who have to suffer in public our kind working out our own issues involving them. I’m trying to be very, very careful in this respect as I write this book about my sister, our family, and this community. It’s hard, trying to be true to the facts, and to experience, but also respectful of people’s right to privacy.