Black Hunger: Food and the Politics of U.S. Identity

Race and American Culture

by Doris Witt

The creation of the Aunt Jemima trademark from an 1889 vaudeville performance of a play called "The Emigrant" helped codify a pervasive connection between African American women and food. In Black Hunger , Doris Witt demonstrates how this connection has operated as a central structuring dynamic of twentieth-century U.S. psychic, cultural, sociopolitical, and economic life.

Taking as her focus the tumultuous era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when soul food emerged as a pivotal emblem of white radical chic and black bourgeois authenticity, Witt explores how this interracial celebration of previously stigmatized foods such as chitterlings and watermelon was linked to the contemporaneous vilification of black women as slave mothers. By positioning African American women at the nexus of debates over domestic servants, black culinary history, and white female body politics, Black Hunger demonstrates why the ongoing narrative of white fascination with blackness demands increased attention to the internal dynamics of sexuality, gender, class, and religion in African American culture.

Witt draws on recent work in social history and cultural studies to argue for food as an interpretive paradigm which can challenge the privileging of music in scholarship on African American culture, destabilize constrictive disciplinary boundaries in the academy, and enhance our understanding of how individual and collective identities are established.

Genres: Food, African American, History, Academic, Womens Studies, Cultural Studies

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Mjhancock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Call it a 3.5. Doris Witt examines the intertwining of black culture, food, and gender, in a book that ranges from the Nation of Islam to Aunt Jemima. The book consists of seven chapters, and three sections--food and servants, soul food and black masculinity, and black female hunger. Each chapter explores a different intersection of gender, food, and race. The book begins with an examination of what Aunt Jemima, of the pancakes, represents, particularly in terms of commercializing depictions of happy black servitude. The second chapter continues along those lines, digging deep into chef Craig Claiborne's role in being one of the white popularizers of soul food in the 60s. (It's an interesting account, though it becomes a little strange when it brings Claiborne's sexuality into the mix; generally, that point holds for the book as a whole, that the argument seems to change register when Witt brings a queer reading into the male figures of the text.)
Chapter three serves as something a bridge, going into the wider notions regarding soul food and racial identity, especially in terms of how accounts of "soul" often elided the female labour involved. Chapter four goes deep into the teachings of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, drawing out the contrast between his restrictions on diet and restrictions on women. Chapter five does something similar with Dick Gregory, comedian turned activist who politically strongly opposed to Farrakhan, but had similar views on restrictive diets and restricting women's roles (in Witt's argument, at least) (It's also the chapter that dwells on a queer reading of Eddie Murphy and appetite in The Nutty Professor, which is... interesting.) . Chapter six, start of the third and final section, turns to the women, looking at Vertamae Smart Grosvenor's construction of social identity and personal culture through her recipes and writings. The final chapter takes these issues into a more general direction, looking at portrayals of the black female appetite and the way black women are erased from many discussions about eating disorders.

I don't know how to feel about the book. For the most part, I don't have the background to evaluate Witt's argument. It presents as a book that's well-researched, without being overladen in jargon. It certainly covers a wide variety of approaches--even knowing how the Aunt Jemima icon had inspired (rightfully) contempt and derision but also rebellion among black artists, there's still a bit of whiplash on starting there and reaching the Brotherhood of Islam. And though she lampshades the issue herself fairly early in the book, it's hard to ignore this book is ultimately written from the subject position of a white female academic who is removed from the issues she's writing about. However good it is, I think I would rather have read it coming from someone who had lived through these experiences firsthand. I will say that it introduced me to a lot of issues I was entirely ignorant of concerning race and North American history, so if nothing else, it's supplied some ground for future reading.

[Chanel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent historical account on how black women have been intentionally left out for their many contributions to the culinary world. Although we have cooked for centuries, when cookbooks appeared our names were missing and other names appeared. Many "others" took credit for their work.

And it still happens today. This book was written in 1999. The lack of appreciation, dismissal and erasure can be seen by the lack of diversity on the Food Network today. There isn't a lot of representation but the majority of us KNOW the truth about where the majority of those recipes originated from and which kitchens those dishes were tasted in FIRST.

[Izetta Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extremely well-researched and rendered book that seamlessly ties history, culture, food practices, and gender together in a seminal text on the link between food and "imagined communities."

[Andrea]

I'm really excited to read this book by one of my favorite professors in college!

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I own this book & have been meaning to read it forever so hopefully posting this will provide some motivation! (I've only read the introduction so far, but its really good.)

[Charlie Rosenthal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating, but ultra-academic. Witt is also convinced that everything and everyone is gay.