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

by Jennifer Jensen Wallach

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.

Genres: Food, History, Nonfiction, African American

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 2, 2019

Reviews

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptionally well-researched and informative look at the intersection of black food habits and culture through most of the 20th century. This book is easily digestible, giving insights into the respectable eaters in assimilationist theory, the objectives of W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Malcolm X, and Baraka in black food culture, resistance and nation-building.

I thoroughly enjoyed the vast amount of knowledge this book conveys in an often overlooked aspect of history - food cultural history - and it's transformation and importance in America. It conveys the cultural evolution of food by a people living in a society whose mechanisms have continuously sought to undermine and devalue it.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW. This scholarly contribution to the body of work surrounding not only Black foodways but 20th century US nationalism, Black nationalism, and economic history is astounding. A must read for scholars of 20th US history and those with interests in foodways.

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is yet another case of where one's academic thesis really doesn't always correlate to a great book. I picked this up from the library on a whim since I enjoy food histories/examinations and thought it would be an interesting read. I don't know much about "black food" (as it says on the cover) or soul food so it sounded like this could be an interesting book.

It's a look of the role of food in black lives (the role food plays, the signals it can give, the history and meaning of particular meals/food items, etc.). We also get pieces and parts of the role of food and thinkers such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois as well as others.

Overall, though, it's a very dry and tedious read. I had thought/hoped it was more of a layperson's book, particularly with the subtitle of: "Black Bodies & Black Food in Twentieth Century America." However, that also subtitle made me a bit uncomfortable of its use of "Bodies" vs. "People" or "Lives." I think I can understand the choice of language, but I'm not sure if that was appropriate.

Library borrow.

[Jim Gulley · Rating 3 out of 5]

In "Every Nation" Wallach argues that the "foodways" of African Americans in the eras after emancipation were important indicators of the evolution of black history and culture. She uses the writings and speeches of black elites like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Dr ML King, Jr., and Malcom X to support her narrative and give historical texture.

The black elite after emancipation sought to distance themselves from the "three M's" of plantation cuisine: meal (cornbread), meat (pork), and molasses, in order to assimilate with mainstream white cultural eating habits. The movement of "respectable eaters" was supplanted in the Civil Rights movement by a shift to "soul food" as a culturally indicative characteristic and a protest against the barriers to mainstream eating as imposed by Jim Crow.

The book is scholarly, tightly written, and meticulously researched. Highly recommended to anyone interested in Southern American history.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wallach's book looks at the history of African-American food and the relationship between culture and identity in 20th-century America. It is an academic study replete with lots of references to the work of other academic authors.

"Food is central to the process of identity construction for any group...For black Americans, footways became a mechanism that could be used to define their relationship to both a nation-state that offered them only second-class citizenship and to their fellow Americans of African descent." 5

"One of the aims of this book is to explore the relationships between African American food expression and nationalism, however, I am deliberately defining "nationalism" expansively as a "feeling of belonging." 11

"Black culinary history is a history of both protest and accommodation, of both race pride and an aching desire for acceptance." 15