The Fruits of Empire: Art, Food, and the Politics of Race in the Age of American Expansion (Volume 73)

by Shana Klein

The Fruits of Empire is a history of American expansion through the lens of art and food. In the decades after the Civil War, Americans consumed an unprecedented amount of fruit as it grew more accessible with advancements in refrigeration and transportation technologies. This excitement for fruit manifested in an explosion of fruit imagery within still life paintings, prints, trade cards, and more. Images of fruit labor and consumption by immigrants and people of color also gained visibility, merging alongside the efforts of expansionists to assimilate land and, in some cases, people into the national body. Divided into five chapters on visual images of the grape, orange, watermelon, banana, and pineapple, this book demonstrates how representations of fruit struck the nerve of the nation’s most heated debates over land, race, and citizenship in the age of high imperialism.  

Genres: History

264 pages, Hardcover

Published October 13, 2020

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book! Shana Klein emphasizes the commonly observed concept that the food we eat and how we eat it is both a mirror and an influence on art and culture. In this book, she’s focused on the artistic and commercial representations of fruit and their affects on post civil war America. She discusses the nuances of each fruit over the five chapters and how they helped perpetuate, obscure or advance stereotypes and social standings of marginalized people related to power in the US at the time and the art it inspired.

[Laura]

esta es una de las lecturas más interesantes que he hecho en años, aprendí muchísimo sobre historia y análisis de obras de arte, pero más que nada, me permitió entender mucho más la importancia de la comida como ese centro que reúne la cultura, la industria, política, poder y arte en la vida humana.

100% recomendado