Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies and Black Food in Twentieth-Century America

by Jennifer Jensen Wallach

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469645223
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jennifer Jensen Wallach is professor and chair of the department of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author or editor of several books, including Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop.
Jennifer Jensen Wallach is professor and chair of the department of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author or editor of several books, including Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A landmark book. Wallach examines how conscientious blacks ate and how the work of eating intersected with the political work of social reform, offering new ways of understanding the massive importance of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, among many others. Speaking to African American culinary heterogeneity, this book situates food studies as essential to understanding black political life and the drive for full citizenship."—Psyche Williams-Forson, author of Building Houses out of Chicken Legs

Every Nation Has Its Dish tells a nuanced history of twentieth-century black foodways that goes far beyond the often nostalgic story of soul food as classical African American fare. In a significant contribution to food studies as well as African American studies, Wallach uncovers the robust discourses and wide range of food practices within black communities and among black intellectuals debating what was appropriate food for black bodies to consume, and why it was so."—Angela Jill Cooley, author of To Live and Dine in Dixie: The Evolution of Urban Food Culture in the Jim Crow South

Editorial Reviews

A deeply researched, highly analytical, sophisticated study of how African Americans thought about food in the twentieth century. She deploys manuscript collections, a wide array of magazines and newspapers, published primary sources, including cookbooks, and fiction by African American authors to construct her thoughtful argument."—Southwestern Historical Quarterly



In this brilliantly researched and engaging study, Jennifer Jensen Wallach demonstrates that the most basic human need—feeding one's body—had extraordinary personal and political valences for African Americans in the long 20th century."—Journal of Social History



A valuable and welcome addition [to] the growing historiography of Black foodways in the United States."—Western Historical Quarterly



Explores the role of food in the history of efforts by African Americans to achieve political and social equality from the late nineteenth century through the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. . . . Wallach draws on the rapidly expanding body of scholarship on African American culinary history and contributes new research of her own. . . . [to shed] new light on black culinary activism that predates the emergence of the concept of soul food in the 1960s."—Journal of Southern History



Throughout this very well-researched work, Wallach displays her profound knowledge of African American history and foodways, presenting the experiences of generations of African American activists and reformers. . . . A compelling work that examines and decodes food practices, habits, and choices to reveal the ways in which individuals and groups construct and reform social, political, and cultural identities."—Digest: A Journal of Foodways & Culture



In her emphasis on the embodied experience of the politically conscious eater, Wallach has made a valuable contribution to the field of food studies and lends quotidian insight to analyses of black intellectual discourse in twentieth-century America. . . . A compelling read, especially for those interested in how food may be used to make political, social, and cultural statements of identity and belonging."—North Carolina Historical Review



Meticulously researched . . . this book serves as both an excellent overview of many key figures and moments in twentieth-century African American history and an enticing introduction to food studies for scholars across disciplines."—Journal of American Ethnic History



Wallach focuses on the foodways of the African American middle class, a cohort missing from much of American history and especially from food history. She also makes a very important claim for food history as intellectual history by spending her time primarily on sorting out how ideas about food are ideas about national identity, rights, and belonging. . . . This carefully researched and cogently argued history should inspire other scholars to reflect on more contemporary African American practitioners of conscientious eating."—American Historical Review



This book is a gem: the thorough research and theoretical framing bring to life previously disregarded historical moments. . . . They serve as a gateway into new aspects of African American history in the twentieth century, an understanding of the political power of American cooking as well as a fine example of how food history offers new perspectives that can be surprisingly intimate and forcefully political at the same time."—Journal of American History



Historians of the middle class, the South and the Great Migration, post-1950s activism, and of foodways will find Every Nation Has Its Dish a comprehensive guide to changing beliefs about what literally goes into the making of a Black citizenry."—Journal of African American History

From the Publisher