Author:
Wallach, Jennifer Jensen, 1974- author.
ImprintChapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2019]
Descriptionxiii, 248 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Note:Creating the foodways of uplift -- Booker T. Washington's multifaceted program for food reform at the Tuskegee Institute -- W.E.B. du Bois, respectable child-rearing, and the representative black body -- Regionalism, social class, and elite perceptions of working-class foodways during the era of the great migration -- World War I, the Great Depression, and the changing symbolic value of black food traditions -- The civil rights movement and the ascendency of the idea of a racial style of eating -- Culinary nationalism beyond soul food.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-240) and index.
Note:Jennifer Jensen Wallach's nuanced history of black foodways across the twentieth century challenges traditional narratives of "soul food" as a singular style of historical African American cuisine. Wallach investigates the experiences and diverse convictions of several generations of African American activists, ranging from Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois to Mary Church Terrell, Elijah Muhammad, and Dick Gregory. While differing widely in their approaches to diet and eating, they uniformly made the cultivation of "proper" food habits a significant dimension of their work and their conceptions of racial and national belonging. Tracing their quests for literal sustenance brings together the race, food, and intellectual histories of America. Directly linking black political activism to both material and philosophical practices around food, Wallach frames black identity as a bodily practice, something that conscientious eaters not only thought about but also did through rituals and performances of food preparation, consumption, and digestion. The process of choosing what and how to eat, Wallach argues, played a crucial role in the project of finding one's place as an individual, as an African American, and as a citizen.
