Stacy Cacciatore

Main navigation

Book Reviews

Literature Review – Analyzing food rhetoric in The Sopranos

by

Assignment: Find out what is already known about your subject and communicate that knowledge concisely in 1,500 words or less. The form of this portion of the project could be an annotated bibliography, a bibliographic or informative essay (i.e., a review of the literature), or some other format conducive to conveying information. Your purpose at this stage will be to inform, not to take a critical stance. (Suggested length: 1,500-2,000 words). Please submit your work as a PDF file.

 

 

Literature Review – Analyzing food rhetoric in The Sopranos

 

 

Barthes, Roland. Empire of Signs. Cape, 1983.

 

Barthes (1983) writes, “food is never anything but a collection of fragments, none of which appears privileged by an order of ingestion; to eat is not to respect a menu (an itinerary of dishes), but to select” (Empire of Signs 22). By correlating food to fragments and ‘selection’ we see the intention of choosing food and intention correlates to meaning.

 

Barthes states that food is an experience in touch. He provides an example of rice, stating that the substance is a fragment, both cohesive and detachable, what floats contrasts with what sinks, what’s dense vs. what is stuck together. He compares and contrasts food in France vs. in Japan and how the interpreter views the food, for example, in France a clear soup is a poor soup, but in Japan, fluid as clear as water with only a few shreds floating gives the idea of density, nutritive without grease and a comforting elixir demonstrating that “food becomes no longer a prey to which one does violence (meat, flesh over which one does battle), but a substance harmoniously transferred.

 

bell hooks, “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance,” in Eating Culture, ed. Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 181.

 

In Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance, bell hooks speak about the ‘Other’ and how race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure. Hooks speaks about how on the college campus at Yale, she overheard young, white college men speaking of their conquests in terms of race, shopping for sexual partners based on their ethnicity the same way they shop for their courses. These young males, sexual encounters with those of another race was their way of confronting the “Other”. bell hooks wrote about a film Heart Condition, in which a white racist cop has a heart transplant, receiving a new heart from a black man. Transformed by his “black heart” he learns to transform his attitudes towards race. In this film, there was a dramatization of “eating the Other”. In ancient times, there were practices among primitive people to rip the heart out of someone else and eat it so they can embody that person’s spirit or characteristics.

 

 

 

DeVault, Marjorie L. Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work. University of Chicago Press, 1994.

 

Marjorie DeVault (1994) argues that “feeding work has become one of the primary ways that women ‘do’ gender”.  Performing the roles of cooking and feeding thus often serves as a reaffirmation of gender roles, so that for many women this work “has become an apparently ‘natural’ part of the gendered self.”

 

 

Goldthwaite, Melissa.Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics.Southern Illinois University Press, 2017.

 

Food, Feminisms, Rhetoricscontains essays written by a variety of feminist scholars with varying viewpoints. Tammie M. Kennedy discusses the rhetoric of wine in Boxed Wine Feminisms: The Rhetoric of Women’s Wine Drinking in The Good Wifeto discuss how wine and drinking have become commonplace rhetoric in today’s society. Kennedy specifically uses The Good Wife to exemplify how “drinking practices are inflected by gender ideologies that shape representations in popular culture” (171). Over the past ten years, wine has been portrayed as a substance that enables women to deal with the stress of balancing motherhood with a career and the pressures of everyday life. Kennedy makes the tie of this wine-drinking culture to feminism, stating that it is a form of female assertion. However, she recognizes there are contrary views on wine-drinking and feminism. Gloria Steinem is quoted as saying, “Alcohol is not a women’s issue”, while other feminists have touted how alcohol is an antidote to managing modern motherhood.

 

 

Grynbaum , M. “Mangia Mafia! Food, Punishment, and Cultural Identity in The Sopranos.” The Essential Sopranos Reader, 2001, p. 183.

 

Food and dining play an important role in the series The Sopranos. Grynbaum (2001) pointed out that “every episode of the series is saturated in sumptuous Italian fare. The central locale of the Soprano household is its kitchen; Tony’s mob hangout is Satriale’s Pork Store and Meat Market, a butcher’s shop; and many of Tony’s family dinners, with blood relatives or blood brothers, occur in the upscale setting of Nuovo Vesuvio, the mob’s local restaurant of choice. Names of Italian dishes fly as often as bullets: pasta “fazool,” veal parm’, tiramisu, clam originator. The characters fetishize certain dishes and the camera follows suit, hovering on steaming heaps of fresh semolina spaghetti” (184). The Sopranos uses the ‘language of food’ throughout the series to portray Italian-Americans, culture, personalities, and religion.

 

 

Lindenfeld, Laura. “Women Who Eat Too Much: Femininity and Food in Fried Green Tomatoes.” From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food, (Editors: Avakian, Arlene Voski and Barbara Haber), University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, pp. 221–245.

 

 

Fried Green Tomatoesexplores the relationship between women and food. The film reaffirms hegemonic values and provides several examples of the relationship between gender, food, and power. Lindenfeld (2005) explores how the film is intrinsically linked to material that challenges cultural norms and adheres to what Raymond Williams refers to as “emergent culture”. By “emergent” Williams means “first that new meanings and values, new practices, new significances, and experiences, are continually being created,” (224). The film navigates both effective “dominant culture” and “oppositional culture”. Fried Green Tomatoes, attempts to challenge gender roles and heterosexism and the stereotypical ways women and food have been represented in mainstream media (224). In film women who are “larger” than what hegemonic culture says is acceptable are portrayed as either the butt of a joke, evil, comically unattractive or a domineering mother figure. Even when slender women eat, they are seldom portrayed as “enjoying” the food without being demonized or sexualized.

 

Lindenfeld states “The cinematography and editing have already established food as a central link between the contemporary and the historical in this opening scene” (227). Lindenfeld describes that for Idgie and Ruth, their relationship to food represents community, connectedness, and togetherness while Evelyn’s relationship with food signifies alienation, loneliness, and pain. The comparison between processed ‘junk’ food and homemade food contributes to this correlation. The film makes a point to build on the narrative that food is power.

 

The film creates a dichotomy between “good eating” and “bad eating”, linking thinness with “good eating” and fatness with lack of control. Fried Green Tomatoesdisplays woman as the classic feeder and server, making her subservient. Lindenfeld states, “The cinematography cautiously provides us with just enough distance from Evelyn that we can empathize with her without having to fear becoming her” (231).

 

 

McCabe, Janet & Kim Akass. “What Has Carmela Ever Done for Feminism? Carmela Soprano and the Post-Feminist Dilemma.” Reading the Sopranos, Lavery, D. (Editor). Palgrave McMillian, 2006, pp. 39–55.

 

McCabe and Akass (2006) explore Carmela Soprano’s role as a Mafia housewife and her contributions to the feminist cause. McCabe and Akass mention, “she supports widowed girlfriends with baked goods and sympathy but only until her husband tells her to terminate the friendship.” (39). While the authors concur that generally, Carmella is an embarrassment to the feminist struggle, there is something compelling about her. The authors argue that Carmella possesses a tremendous sense of agency, holding a unique ability to control her unruly husband. Carmella rejects feminism as “an elitist practice”, partially due to her Catholicism. Carmella is a paradox and is full of contradictions, stuck between domestic goddess, victim and Mafia matriarch. The long series narrative arc “imposes meticulous rules of self-examination” (Foucault, Will 19). The narrative mechanisms compel Carmella to bring forth representation.

 

 

Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Making Sense of Taste: Food & Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.

 

Korsmeyer (1999) explores ‘taste’ and how it can be used not only in the literal sense as it applies to food, but also in a metaphorical sense in regards to the ability to discern beauty and aesthetic qualities. “Philosophers have assumed that the sense of taste affords little of theoretical interest. Too closely identified with the body and our animal nature, it seems not to figure in the exploration of rationality or the development of knowledge. Therefore, taste is omitted from epistemology’s discussions of sense perception, in striking contrast to vision, which receives a great deal of attention for its delivery of information about the world” (1). Gustatory taste can divide and unite classes, race, and gender. From a moral standpoint, food can serve as both a bodily pleasure and a vice of gluttony. In Christianity, the enjoyment of food and eating is cautioned against as a ‘sin’ of gluttony. There are narratives of eating and ‘gustatory semantics’. Food can serve as a key component of the plot of a story, the dramatic focus of an event or provide symbolic attachment.

 

 

Rice, Jeff. “Menu Literacy.” Pre/Text , vol. 21, no. 1-4, 2001, pp. 119–131.

 

Rice (2001) posits that a menu is a form of culinary literacy. Whether written in chalk on a board, printed on paper or listed in an 11-page book, a menu invites one to engage with menu literacy. Just like the ingredients in a dish, our senses are fragments. The practice of writing before eating is customary for Japanese chefs. Rice points out that on Iron Chef, the contestants do poorly when they actually “cook” the food, rather than leave it raw. Rather then they develop a “meaningful” menu and write down the dishes names and ingredients, they demonstrate menu literacy. The concealing of the literary practices of food preparation also lead to mystery, for example when the menu of a restaurant in Chinatown is written on the wall in Chinese – this leads to fears that one who cannot ‘read’ the menu is missing out and the Chinese customers are getting “succulent dishes I don’t even know about” (112). Compare and contrast the ordering of food at a fast food restaurant, in which the ‘reading’ of the menu isn’t even necessary (cheeseburger, French Fries) vs. a fine dining establishment in which every item needs to be read slowly before ordering (strawberry sherry reduction, cashew cauliflower mash). This is yet another example of how food literacy contributes to the division of class.

 

 

Snider, Zachary. “The Erotic Pleasures of Danger Foods” Pre/Text , vol. 21, no. 1-4, 2001, pp. 133–165.

 

Snider (2001) states that pain can be involved with food and sex in regards to pleasure and pain. For example, eating hot peppers, spicy foods can be considered aphrodisiacs. The same dopamine-laden neurotransmitters in the brain are activated when risk behaviors related to both food and sex are sought.  Anything the brain perceives as enjoyable will cause dopamine to flood our brain cells and build a memory ramp for pleasure. Food and sex are generally closely linked. They are physically in our brain, as well as emotionally. Good food is correlated with good sex. “Some social theorists—Foucault, namely—argue that this tantalizing, ongoing search for culinary and carnal pleasure has much more in common than most pleasure-seeking eaters and sexual practitioners are even aware of themselves. These prime reasons consist of: purely pleasurable greed and bliss; masochistic endeavors; psychological confusion and/or substitution of the oral and phallic stages; desire for or purposeful loss of self-control; social status motives such as succumbing to trends or obtaining bragging rights; transcendence of gender and oft-established power roles with ‘foodie’ or sexual experimentation; among other reasons explored in the forthcoming sections” (135-136). The relationship between risk, potential pain and pleasure are interconnected. Sex has been substituted for food. The separation between pleasure and pain, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of sex and eating.

 

Walden, Sarah. Tasteful Domesticity Women’s Rhetoric & the American Cookbook 1790-1940.University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018.

 

In Tasteful Domesticity, Sarah Walden states that there are specific, ideologic characteristics communicated to American wives and mothers. “Republican motherhood” is defined as “the relegation of women’s authority to the ‘private’ sphere” (29). A key component of this was a common understanding “that one’s passions and preferences must be regulated for the good of the Republic” (29). Walden states, “Early republican society rhetorically cast women as rational beings with the ability to self-regulate,” (34). This demonstrates the continued notion that reinforces the notion that women should be viewed as beautiful objects meant for the male gaze.

 

Hale, author of The Good Housekeeper(1839) defines ideal motherhood: “The mother appears more in relation to her children than in any other position: therefore, here mind and thoughts should chiefly be given to there are and training” (65). The role of the ‘moral mother’ was to ensure to nurture her children and her role was defined more through her character than her financial state. From a morality perspective, Walden furthers her argument that ideal motherhood is defined by these texts when she quotes child-rearing advice in Mother’s Magazine, “the tastes and habits of children are usually formed from what they see and hear from their mother, they copy her likes and dislikes, and when very young, will often do and suffer much to win her smile of approbation” (67). Walden explains that both Beecher and Mother Magazine relies upon Protestant context to describe women’s work. Walden states, “Rhetorically, taste now indicates rational food choices based on modern science, while the palate connotes uneducated food choices based on tradition and emotion. In either application, the message is clear: Americans need an intellectual understanding of food and the body to promote good taste and cultural betterment,” (124).

 

 

Yacowar, M. The Sopranos on the Couch.The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2002.

 

The Sopranos was an HBO series that attracted 3.7 million viewers on Sunday nights, 10 million in its four weekly airings and topped cable audience ratings. The first episode of Season Two scored the highest cable show rating in history. It received 16 Emmy nominations in its first season and won two. Each week The Sopranos churned out content that was nuanced and thought through as a film. Yacowar states, “it’s brilliantly written, performed, and filmed. Each episode has the polish of an excellent feature film – with a tighter yet more complex, resonant script than most,” (12). Without having to build the plot and faux cliffhangers around advertisements and commercials, The Sopranos was able to develop a revolutionary series that drew the audience into the immense, dimensioned characters’ lives. There is a complex dialectic between male vs. female, woman vs. idealized image of a woman, strength vs. vulnerability, which creates a central tension.

 

 

The Association of Small Bombs Book Review

by

The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

By Stacy Cacciatore

The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan is a fascinating novel that centers on a bomb that goes off in the Delhi marketplace in 1996. This “small bomb”, which kills approximately 50 people, isn’t a huge event that gets discussed in the media or forces outrage across the globe. Which is exactly the point? There are horrifying terrorist attacks across the world far too frequently, that is overlooked. The large attacks, in high profile cities, garner attention, but there are so many that affect the lives of many that we don’t even hear about. Which is why the premise of this story is so important. Mahajan starts the story with the viewpoint of Deepa and Vikas Khurana, whose two sons, ages 11 and 13, died in the attack. The boys were at the market to pick up a TV for a repairman…a task that should have been done the previous week, but they kept putting off. They went with a friend, Mansoor, who survived the attack, but came out deeply scarred, not only physically, but emotionally.

Mahajan provides an omnipresent point of view and the novel follows the lives of the terrorists (Shockie and Malik), Deepa and Vikas, Mansoor and Mansoor’s parents, both before and after the bomb, and explores how the explosion affects each of them. The beauty of this novel is in the deep empathy and emotion in which Mahajan elicits in the reader. Mahajan takes a risk in portraying the terrorist in a humane light that allows the reader to feel empathy. Typically, society views people as “good” or “bad”. Terrorists = bad. Victims = good. But Mahajan shows us all of the shades of grey in between. The reader can feel the emotion of Deepa and Vikas and the deep sorrow that permeates their lives after the loss of their children. Mahajan particularly provides us with an interesting perspective of how the loss of their children affected Deepa and Vikas’ marriage. He writes about how they turn to each other and make love, even in the throes of their loss. He also helps us feel how Mansoor’s parents, who were already overprotective before the incident, place even more pressure, hopes and dreams upon Mahajan. Sharif says to his wife, “Watch your spending – we should send him to America for college when he grows up.” (Mahajan, 2016, p. 121). This isn’t something that Deepa and Vikas have the luxury of discussing. They have no children for which their hopes and dreams lay upon. They don’t get to think about the future. Their children are forever in their minds 11 and 13. No college to save up for, no career to help them think about (in contrast to Mahajan, who wants to become a computer programmer). This is brought to light in particular when Mansoor comes back to visit India in 2002 and they see Mansoor “young, able-bodied, grown-up, handsome, thin, holding out his wrists, his stormy eyebrows like two thoughts disagreeing with each other,” (Mahajan, 2016, p. 246). Seeing Mansoor grown up helps them remember their own sons, but it is bitter sweet as Tushar and Nakul would never get to experience life as an adult.

Mahajan makes another bold move when he states, “But the boys had ruined their lives. The boys, not the bomb, had been their killers,” (Mahajan, 2016, p. 246). This statement made me feel uncomfortable. I give Mahajan credit for providing many points of view in this novel and for bringing us through the experiences and emotions of each of the characters and how the bomb affected their lives. However, I feel that he fell short of his depiction of Deepa. Deepa, as the boys’ mother, is portrayed as using physical affection to fill the gaping hole in her heart from losing her boys. First, she turns to her husband to make love, even in the depth of crying and moaning in the middle of the night. Then, she has an affair. I suppose this could be the response of someone looking for love they’ve lost and trying to fill it unsuccessful ways. However, I feel that a mother’s love would supersede her feelings of loss over her marriage and husband. When she says that it’s the boys that ruined their lives and killed them, it’s as if she’s saying that she’s placing more value on her marriage than being a mother.

Overall, I think that Mahajan wrote beautifully, with raw emotion and was honest in his portrayal of each character. He took the reader into the lives of each of these families and brought us along their emotional journey. If I were to use this book to teach others about writing, I would focus on how Mahajan uses the omniscient point of view. He does a wonderful job of seamlessly bringing the reader into the mind and emotional state of each of the characters. He does so without bias. For the reader to move from the mother of two young boys killed senselessly from a bomb, to the terrorist himself, in a way that doesn’t have us immediately hating the terrorist and not listening to what he has to say..well that’s good writing. This book reads like non-fiction, even though it’s fiction. I had to remind myself several times that this was not a true story. In teaching writing, this can be a good way for a writer to start to develop a story. To write about an event, and then write about the event from the point of view of others who were there. For example, one could write about a marathon from the perspective of the runner, volunteer, race director, family member, spectator and young child watching their mother cross the finish line.

 

References

Mahajan, K. (2016). The Association of Small Bombs.New York, NY: Penguin Books.

While the City Slept Book Review

by

While the City Slept by Eli Sanders

By Stacy Cacciatore

This book was written by a journalist who wrote about the murder of two women in 2009 by a young man who was mentally disturbed. The opening scene was riveting and the description of the scream, red house and white curtain billowing out of the window placed me directly in the scene. We are thrust into the violent aftermath of what we learn is a sexual assault of a young lesbian couple in love, the attempted murder of both women and death of Teresa Butz. Eli may start the book at the climax, but the story is just getting started.

 

He provides an in-depth tour of Isaiah’s descent into madness. We learned of Isaiah’sdisturbing childhood, his mentally ill mother and absent father. We can see as Isaiah’smental state gets worse and worse. Even though I knew the ultimate outcome, I found myself on the edge of my seat, hoping Isaiah would get help. Hoping that someone would see the extent of his illness. But by the time those around him finally realized the extent of his illness, it was too late.

 

When I read the passage in which Isiah is a young boy and his sister describes how he was “odd” because he would come up and start talking about random topics, such as history, chemistry or science. This sent chill bumps up my spine, as I also knew someone personally who was mentally disturbed who did the same thing. He scared me and I felt that he was a danger to society. I tried to notify the right individuals to help make sure that this man was not a danger to anyone, but he too fell through the cracks. Their stories were eerily similar.

 

This leads me to see how this is a pervasive issue in our society. Eli shines the light on an important subject. We have to do more to ensure that these crimes do not occur in the first place with early intervention and programs to help those who have mental illnesses. Given the stigma of mental illness in our country, there are many challenges in tackling this issue. I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that Eli provides the most in-depth coverage I’ve ever seen to answer the question, “how is a killer made?”

 

I’m also impressed with how Eli garnered sympathy not only for Jennifer Hopper and Teresa Butz, but also Isiah. He brought the human experience to each of their stories, which is incredible considering he never met Teresa nor spoke with Isiah. This book is an incredible piece of journalism that opens the lid on how mental illness is treated. It brings a sense of urgency to fix the system that allowed these horrific crimes to occur. This book is a must read.

Book Review: Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics

by

Book Review: Food, Feminisms, Rhetoric  by Melissa Goldwaithe

by Stacy Cacciatore

Historically, the study of women and food has been deemed unworthy of scholarly attention. Melissa Goldwaithe turns this on its’ head with Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics. In the past feminist scholars have been reluctant to study the intersection of gender and food. Goldwaithe acknowledges this at the forefront and opens by setting the stage for the importance of this topic in the studies of rhetorics and feminism. She grabs the reader in the first paragraph, inviting them to take a deeper look at the symbolism of food and food-like materials around them. She references ‘Hungry-Man’ frozen dinners and ‘Skinnygirl’ products to introduce the rhetoric of foods on the shelves of every grocery store, but the average consumer hasn’t paid much attention to. She then invites the reader to think even deeper…what formed their beliefs about food? What foods did they grow up thinking were good? Bad? The reader is immediately immersed in a deeper level of thinking of food and representation. Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics sets out to critically examine the historical and rhetorical significance of women and food.

First off, note the plural of both the words ‘feminisms’ and ‘rhetorics’. Goldwaithe purposefully uses the plural versions of these words, acknowledging that there are multiple types of both feminisms and rhetorics. The book is divided into four parts: (1) “Part I. Purposeful Cooking: Recipes for Historiography, Thrift and Peace” (2) “Part II. Defining Feminist Food Writing” (3) “Part III: Rhetorical Representations of Food-Related Practices” and (4) “Part IV: Rhetorical Representations of Bodies and Cultures” (pp 5-8). Food, Feminisms, Rhetoric contains essays written by a variety of feminist scholars with varying viewpoints. While in the past scholars focused primarily on food disorders and feminists were reluctant to cooking and eating because they were linked to women’s oppression, however, there seems to be a renewed interest in the topic and we’ve seen more works focusing on women, food and rhetoric. Food, Feminisms, Rhetoric explores a wide range of topics, providing a forum for both new and established scholars. The topics covered range from the visual rhetoric of women during the Holocaust to the cultural appropriation and appreciation through food writing to widening the definition of a rhetorician to include housewives who hand-wrote recipe cards and handed them down through the generations.

Part I. contains essays paying attention to cookbooks as feminist historiographies, the “embodied rhetoric” of hand-written recipes handed down by generations of women, the political rhetoric of war-time recipes and thrifty shopping and food preparation. In Writing Recipes, Telling Histories: Cookbooks as Feminist Historiography by Carrie Helms Tippen, she makes the argument that rhetoric requires a redefinition to include women as practitioners of rhetoric (16). Tippen posits that cookbooks serve as a feminist hysterography and places the women authors in a position of the rhetorician.  She uses the cookbook, Sweets: Soul Food Desserts and Memoriesto situate women not only as rhetoricians but historiographers. Using the example of “My My’s Pound Cake” (Pinner’s grandmother) she illustrates how recipes not only provided a narrative for women but also contributed to the development of southern identity. Sweets served not only as a cookbook, but a memoir and alternate female narrative of the Great Migration, in which African Americans moved from the south to the north for a better future. My My uses the recipe for a pound cake to tout her southern pride, stating “Pound cakes are a truly Southern dessert,” (19). Pinner also writes about the re-creation of the southern kitchen and food social practices that migrated with her My My from the south to the north, demonstrating the importance food has on family and culture.

In The Embodied Rhetoric of Recipesby Jennifer Cognard-Black, the reader is brought into the nostalgia of Cognard-Black’s family kitchen, complete with the food-stained recipe card for “Date Puffed Rice Balls”. Cognard-Black argues that handwritten recipe cards serve as the embodiment of rhetoric, giving a three-dimensional voice to women who pass the recipes down through the generation. The hand-written recipes embody the physical aspect of the author, down to their skin cells brushed onto the card, leaving remnants of their actual body, but also situates the author in place and time. She uses the example of her grandmother’s “Date Puffed Rice Balls” recipe. This one 3X5 index card represents the voice of women in America in the 1950s. How you may ask? She gives us several examples, first, the ingredients list calls for ‘oleo’ which is short for ‘oleomargarine’ which fell out of use in the United States in 1949. Afterward, the term ‘margarine’ was used, but we can tell that this recipe was written when the term ‘oleo’ was still widely used. The name on the card is attributed to her grandmother’s friend, ‘Florence Anderson’. Quick research on the name will provide compelling evidence that most likely this is the name of an Anglo-American woman who migrated from England to the United States and was born between 1880-1940 (36). We also know that this recipe was written in a time when sugar was readily available and desserts in ball form were in vogue. All of these facts help provide a living body to the recipe. The author also states that she makes her grandmother’s butterhorn recipe with her daughter every year. Although her daughter never met her grandmother, she has a piece of her through the recipe she’s handed down. What I love most about this essay is my own personal connection to this topic, as my most valued possession is the hand-written recipe book my mom gave me on my wedding day. I’ve always felt a personal connection to her when I flip open the book and follow her directions for making her famous fudge or chili. I run my finger over the pages, feeling the imprint of where her pen left an impression. I still chuckle when I see that she re-wrote her mother-in-law’s recipe for sweet potato casserole because she felt that her handwriting was too messy and she didn’t approve of the amount of butter she used. I laugh at how she wrote her name on the top of the recipes she provided as if I didn’t know that the chili recipe was “mom’s”. And tears come to my eyes as I picture the many nights of my childhood, sitting across the table from her eating her chicken n dumplings and chocolate oatmeal cookies. I’ve always felt closer to her when preparing her recipes and Cognard-Black helps put words as to why.

The chapter, “Promoting Peace, Subverting Domesticity: Cookbooks against War, 1968-1983” by Abby Dubisar was particularly intriguing, as the author provided examples of how women combined recipes with rhetoric for antiwar feminists. The opening quote, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber” by Velia Dean and Barbara B.J. Zimmerman in The Great Day Cookbooksums up this chapter (60). I had never thought of it in those terms before, but wow, how accurate. Using phrases such as, “Make in 10 minutes before rushing off to your WSP meeting” (67), “Italian exports are known the world over. If only PACEM in Terris was a popular as Italian Veal and Peppers. However, until that good day…” and “Spread sauce over chicken and serve. Sometimes (maybe due to nuclear testing) the sauce just won’t thicken enough to spread” (67) the reader can see how political rhetoric is interspersed with recipes. The authors appealed to their readers, women, by using a topic that appealed to their sense while interspersing political rhetoric.

The authors in Part I. all use different methods to articulate similar messages on the argument that cookbooks are indeed rhetoric and the women authors, rhetoricians. Regardless of the format, whether hand-written recipe cards, war-time cookbooks or a memoir with recipes, the writing of recipes serves as important documentation of history and provides women with a voice in a time when male rhetoric dominated.

Part II invites the reader to understand more about defining feminist food writing. Erin Branch conducts a critical analysis of M.F.K. Fisher’s food writing. M.F.K. Fisher was a gastronomical writer, ranked fifth on “The Fifty Most Important Women in Food”, claiming she “created” the genre of food writing (77). At the time, most women wrote about food not for pleasure, but in terms of household management. They wrote about practical topics, such as saving money, recipes and advice, but M.F.K. Fisher wrote about enjoying preparing and eating food. Branch argues that Fisher “provides a rich case study for feminist rhetorical practice” (79). Branch conducts a rhetorical analysis of Fisher’s works, discovering Fisher’s “feminine style” to argue that the pleasures of food are just as important as the other benefits. Branch coins the term, “gastronomical Kairos” as “the ‘fitness’ or ‘opportuneness’ of a given culinary experience’ (79). Branch describes the rhetorical significance of the kariotic moments, using the example of Fisher’s description of eating a peach pie, still warm from the oven, peaches picked straight from the farm and the cream fresh and cold, sitting in the local stream. This description places the reader in the moment and provides an emotionally powerful appeal, contributing to the gastronomical Kairos. In fact, Branch argues that Fisher’s gastronomical Kairos is the key reason why she’s so successful. What’s also interesting to note is Fisher’s use of initials rather than her first name, which she does as to not be identified as female in her writing. I see this in my workplace still, in corporate America 2019. I work with several women who refuse to use their first name in their email, signature or corporate directory listing. Instead, they prefer to be referred to by their initials. By removing their gender in written communications, they placed themselves on an even playing field as men in the industry, similar to what Fisher did. Branch also brings up an excellent point that readers are more likely to identify with a persona whose authority is derived from experience than education or other remote sources, which is part of the reason Fisher was so successful. Fisher dared to do what only other male food writers did at the time, write about the pleasure of food. Speaking of M.L.K. Fisher, the next author, Lynn Bloom, opens with a quote from M.L.K. Fisher, “Our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others,” (89). Bloom speaks of how our love of food is intermingled with our experiences, family and memories. She also discusses vulnerability as a rhetorical strategy, using Gabrielle Hamilton, author of Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef and chef/owner of Pruneas an example. Bloom discusses how Hamilton is a powerful force among female rhetoricians, with her controlling, authoritative and list-making style. She displays the dichotomy of ball-breaking chef and motherhood with Hamilton’s ‘to-do’ list she wrote when 39 weeks pregnant:

Train CR on a 2-man line

Call Roodie for fill-in?

Have baby

Tell brunch crew vinaigrette too acidic

Pick up white platters

Change filters in hoods

Figure out pomegranate syrup. (95)

 

By having ‘have baby’ as only one-line item on this otherwise, work-centric list, demonstrates the many balls Hamilton kept in the air.

In “From Street Food to Digital Kitchens: Toward a Feminist Rhetoric of Culinary Tourism (or, How Not to Devour Paris and Eat Your Way Through Asia)”by Kristin Winet, discusses culinary tourism, which is the consuming of foods while traveling. She outlines the problem, namely cosmopolitanism. Jennie Germann Molz notes, “the practice of cosmopolitanism is not theoretically considered to be negative, as it is most often associated with ‘a stance toward diversity itself’ through a demonstration that willingly wishes to engage with the Other in curious, appreciative ways – an orientation that is not at its heart, necessarily colonizing by design (103). The main problem Winet outlines is that many food writers are not culturally sensitive. She posits that there are consequences to taking a cosmopolitan stance, including inadvertently exploiting the “Other’s” culture at the expense of highlighting how ‘adventurous’ they are. The culinary tourist ends up being about the author’s bravery at trying new and exotic foods rather than appreciating and understanding another’s culture. This process ends up decontextualizing food by erasing the history of how the food came to be. Winet states, “This is, in some ways, the kind of Internet-based de-contextualization that celebrates global food without really understanding them” (106). In the south we way, ‘she means well’ or ‘bless her heart’ which is the sentiment I have towards these to unwitting food writers. In their attempt to contribute to the rhetoric on food, they end up devaluing the culture rather than demonstrating their appreciation.

Part III evaluates rhetorical representations of food-related practices. Abby Wilkerson writes the first essay in this chapter, “Not Your Father’s Farm: Toward Transformative Rhetorics Of Food and Agriculture” and provides examples of how the rhetoric of farming and agriculture paints a picture of the ideal farming family, which is white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual and traditional. She discusses Eileen Schells’ work, Rural Literacies, which calls for an ‘alternative agrarian rhetoric’. Schell extends Kenneth Burke’s rhetoric of persuasion to farming families and the marketing that reinforces the imagery of farm and family. This ‘family rhetoric’ results in indirect forms of exclusion, as LGBTQ, non-white and single farmers don’t fit the marketing images of the white, heterosexual family to sell their goods.

In “Baklava As Home: Exile and Arab Cooking in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Novel Crescent” Arlene Voski-Avakian discusses the importance of diversity in the rhetoric on food. She also portrays the dilemmas that Arab American feminist writers face. If they harken back to a “glorified past” they can be criticized because of the patriarchal dominant forces in the Arab world. However, if they explore the patriarchy of their cultures in diaspora, it can play into the Western assumptions of Arab culture. She also addresses the challenges in Arab American writers to represent Arabs, as this is a broad category of diverse people. They have the challenge to decide who’s in and who’s out. There are also sensitivities to not reinforce the Americanized trope that Arab Americans are terrorists with ‘their’ women having little awareness. However, Voski-Avakian posits that Abu-Jaber successfully navigates this rocky rhetoric in her work, Crescent. She uses food as the unifying object that brings people together and offers a way to connect people across their differences (136).

Winona Landis takes a similar approach as Voski-Avakian in the respect that she analyzes the work of a female fiction author. Landis explores the work, My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, which plays a significant role in gendered reproduction and global feminism (142). Landis states, “My Year of Meatsexemplifies the neoliberal project of identification across difference; that is, it relies on the production of positive feelings and the simplification of difference in order to promote inclusive political change,” (143). Landis expands upon Allison Carruth’s theory that “[Ozeki’s] fiction analogizes cultural diversity and biodiversity as a rhetorical tactic for rejecting ‘global economic exchange networks” by adding the emphasis on emotional reactions and identification (143-44). Similar to Kristin Winet, Landis notes the danger in representing cultural diversity as truly an appreciation of other cultures or reinforcing the mode of the United States at the center and American modes of consumption.

Sugar and Spice: Cooking with the Girl Poisoner by Sylvia A. Pamboukian offers a fascinating look into the imagery in children’s literature of the juxtaposition of the girl poisoner as innocent and celebrated from the woman poisoner, a witch and villainous.  Pamboukian cites several examples in children’s literature, including Anne of Green Gables, Harry Potter, Brave and The Secret Garden of the girl poisoner. I was particularly interested in this chapter, as this was a view I had never before considered. She extends ‘poisoning’ to include self-poisoning (The Secret Garden), cooking with less than fresh ingredients (Little Women) and deliberately poisoning ones’ family (Brave). Pamboukian posits that the ‘girl poisoners’ heroines treated as girls are read as naïve and enhances their likability. However, once a ‘girl’ becomes a ‘woman’ (as in marriageable or married women) she becomes unsympathetic.

Tammie M. Kennedy discusses the rhetoric of wine in Boxed Wine Feminisms: The Rhetoric of Women’s Wine Drinking in The Good Wife to discuss how wine and drinking has become commonplace rhetoric in today’s society. Kennedy specifically uses The Good Wife to exemplify how “drinking practices are inflected by gender ideologies that shape representations in popular culture” (171). Over the past ten years, wine has been portrayed as a substance that enables women to deal with the stress of balancing motherhood with a career and the pressures of everyday life. Kennedy makes the tie of this wine-drinking culture to feminism, stating that it is a form of female assertion. However, she recognizes there are contrary views on wine-drinking and feminism. Gloria Steinem is quoted as saying, “Alcohol is not a women’s issue”, while other feminists have touted how alcohol is an antidote to managing modern motherhood.

Part IV addresses what I’ve typically thought of when I think of women and food, the rhetorical representations of bodies and cultures. Consuelo Carr Salas opens up with The Commodification of Mexican Women on Food Packaging, addressing how Mexican foodstuffs are marketed. Walking down the ethnic food aisle, one may notice the traditional Mexican folklorico dress on the woman on the salsa jar or the woman in a simple blouse in front of a traditional kitchen setting (190). Salas critically examines this rhetoric, asking questions such as ‘who is this marketed to?’ ‘why do some companies choose to sell their product using stereotypical images vs. plain packaging?” (190). Salas found that scholars had conducted many studies on women in advertisements and found that while women are represented in more diverse roles now than in the past, food advertisement is more likely to depict women in gender normative roles. Salas’ call to action is to ask consumers to pay closer attention to the visual rhetoric of certain cultures in advertising and consider the way the stereotypes are perpetuated (195).

Alexis Baker tackles the sensitive topic of female rhetoric during the Holocaust in “Feeding the Self: Representations of Nourishment and Female Bodies in Holocaust Art.” What she found by exploring the paintings and artifacts from the Holocaust is that women used visual rhetoric to hold on to some semblance of normalcy and their life prior to being imprisoned in the concentration camp. Baker specifically looks at Ravensbruck Women’s Concentration Camp, fifty miles outside of Berlin. These women and their children were starved to death, as food rations weren’t increased, even as the camp overflowed with more and more prisoners. To ease their suffering, they composed recipe books based on their lives prior to the Holocaust. Two of these cookbooks survived. This domestic rhetoric enabled women to maintain hope and mentally place themselves outside of the camp into a time when they were happy, healthy and with their families. Paintings also exist from this time, Baker evaluates this art, specifically Mother and Child by Halina Olomucki, and found that the mother and child are represented as being together, even in a time when children were torn from their mother’s arms, their cheeks were full, in a time when they were being starved, and their locks flowed over their shoulders, in a time when their heads were being shaved. This art demonstrates the power of visual rhetoric for these women to represent them identify not by their current reality, but in the roles, they held in the past. This rhetoric enabled them to present their identities “not as victims, but of strong Jewish women” (204).

“Evolving Ana” by Morgan Gresham explores the pro-anorexia website, House of Thin, and how the rhetoric plays a role in the discourse of eating disorders. The common belief of ‘pro-ana’ and ‘pro-mia’ (meaning promoting and encouraging the eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia respectively) websites is that they contribute to the dangerous rhetoric for young girls and women on eating disorders. Gresham seeks to better understand the complexity of the discourse on these sites. Pro-ana websites popped up at an alarming rate in the 1990s and early 2000s, with a variety of thinspiration quotes and images, advice on how to maintain and hide eating disorders and tips for losing weight. There are differing thoughts on these sites, as The National Eating Disorders Association and the National Association of Anorexia fought to have these sites taken down, as they believed them to be damaging and hindering recovery for those suffering from an eating disorder. However, other researchers recognized the value in these sites, recognizing the value of women with this disorder to connect with one another and develop a coping strategy for their illness. The audience for these sites is primarily women recovering from anorexia. These women face an interesting challenge, as third-wave feminist writers claim that overcoming eating disorders is being a feminist, but Gresham explains that recovery isn’t a one-step, or one and done experience, thereby plunging women recovering from the illness into questioning their allegiance to feminism.

Rebecca Ingalls discusses the important topic of grotesque rhetoric in the Skinny Bitchbook series. The authors of Skinny Bitch, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, use foul language, harsh feedback and shaming language to persuade readers to adopt a veganism lifestyle. Ingalls likens this to ‘grotesque realism’, which is “excessive corporeality illustrated in artifacts depicting the carnival tradition but mean to be repressed in high culture” (223). Ingalls posits that Freedman and Barnouin use the image of the shameful female glutton and the horrible foods she eats as a rhetorical strategy to steer readers away from eating meat, dairy, sugar and refined carbohydrates and adopting a “clean” lifestyle to get skinny. The Skinny Bitch books serve as a stark contrast to the other diet books on the market that provide a sympathetic, understanding and caring view of a woman’s challenge with losing weight. Rather, Skinny Bitchtakes advantage of the “plight of a woman who has already hit rock bottom in a cycle of fad diets and weight gain and loss; what has she to lose with a little cut-to-the-chase advice about how she has failed to change her food habits?” (227). Ingalls compares the rhetoric used in Skinny Bitch to what Bakhtin describes as ‘billingsgate abuse’, at the core of grotesque realism. Compare Bakhtin’s urging to see the ‘affection’ in the insult to Freedman and Barnouin stating is ‘tough love’. Another interesting point in this article is the affirmations the authors use in Skinny Bitch to motivate the women to lose weight, it’s noted that the progression of mantras moves from “my ass is getting smaller”, “my thighs are getting thinner” and “my stomach is getting flatter” to “loving my body more” and finally “getting healthier and healthier”. This reinforces the focus on the importance of looks and only being able to love ones’ body AFTER one’s ass, thighs and stomach are smaller (235).

Moving from skinny bitches to fat ladies, Sara Hillin examines the rhetoric of the Two Fat Ladies television show in “Gusto and Grace: Two Fat Ladies and The Rhetorical Construction of Fat Culinary Ethos”. The ‘two fat ladies’ were successful and set out to “disrupt the dominate weight-normative discourse that exalted thin bodies” (238). Hillin posits that the ‘two fat ladies’ were forerunners in the “movement to combat fat oppression” and were activists, promoting self-love, size acceptance and being comfortable in one’s skin.

The plus-sized female is also explored in Elizabeth Lowry’s essay, “Deconstructing the Plus-Size Female Sleuth: Fat Positive Discourse, Rhetorical Excess, And Cultural Constructions of Femininity in Cozy Crime Fiction”. Lowry explores the relationship between personal and the political with fat positive discourse in the second-wave feminist movement, specifically by taking a deep look at novels portraying a fat female detective. While much of what Lowry explores is an interesting exploration into this genre of “chick-lit” (a term troublesome in itself), what I found the most interesting was her assessment that the fat female protagonist has to be careful not to indulge in ‘excess’ of other vices, which would reinforce the trope that overweight women are indulgent and lack self-control. Specifically, Lowry uses Flake’s Hannah as an example, citing ‘Hannah’s sexual desires are hinted at, but never quite fulfilled and her ambivalence about her own body is clear” (259). Lowry states that this is done to be careful not to play into the notion that overweight women are excessively grateful for male attention. Lowry’s concluding argument is one of mixed messages, stating that when writing about a fat protagonist, the author should be careful to celebrate excess, but not take it too far, embrace their body while also not focusing too much on their fatness. From Lowry’s analysis, it feels as if an author can’t win, if their female protagonist is overweight, but doesn’t talk about her weight, she’s “living from the neck up” (257). However, if she focuses on it too much, she’s reinforcing the stereotype that overweight women are not comfortable in their bodies.

In conclusion, Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics is an eye-opening collection of essays from feminist scholars with ground-breaking ideas, thoughts and conclusions. I gobbled up this book quickly and couldn’t put it down. Each essay is written superbly and offers a fresh new perspective on women and food. Given the variety in topics, from Grandmother’s handwritten recipe cards to the danger in cultural misappropriate a culinary tourism writer to the power of rhetoric and body image, each essay is well worth the read. The scholars offer well-researched viewpoints and extended the views posited by other researchers. I am inspired to take a deeper look at many of these issues, that previously I was not even aware. I hope that this work is the first of many works focusing on the relationship between food, feminism and rhetoric, as I believe this field is rich in content and we’ve barely touched the surface on this important topic. I highly recommend this book and I will be looking for additional works by Goldwaithe.

 

Works Cited

Goldthwaite, Melissa A. Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics. Southern Illinois University Press, 2017.

 

Book Review – Tasteful Domesticity by Sarah Walden

by

In Tasteful Domesticity, Sarah Walden explores the scholarship on cookbooks and how they’ve served as a rhetorical space for women in nineteenth-century America. She claims that Tasteful Domesticity is the first book-length study of women’s rhetoric in American cookbooks (13). Walden posits that cookbooks not only “satisfy Aristotle’s famous definition of rhetoric as ‘locating the available mans of persuasion’”, but also allow women to engage in the cultural discourse that they were previously denied (4). Walden shows how the American cookbook has served as a rhetorical device that contributed to defining the ideal American body (both physically and ideologically) and social structure. While cookbooks are often assumed to be a collection of recipes with a simple list of ingredients and instructions, she argues that they are much more, articulating domestic philosophies and providing a platform for the author to establish an authoritative ethos. The book is organized into sections to focus on various components of rhetoric in American cookbooks, focusing on taste rhetoric in virtue, morality, regions, science, and race. Walden examines a variety of scholar’s work on rhetoric and cookbooks while adding her own empirical research, perspective, and rhetorical analysis.

Since women have historically had less education than men, the ‘training’ they did receive was given to cultivate ‘epistolary skills’, resulting in ‘parlor rhetoric’. Parlor rhetoric is a metaphor introduced by Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) for the “unending conversation that is going on at the point in history when we are born” (Nordquist, 2018). This parlor rhetoric was common in cookbooks and domestic manuals, where not only many of them were written by women, but they were written specifically for women. The cookbook was a space in which women could have an authoritative voice and communicate intellectual and physical standards. Embedded in this messaging was cultural hierarchies of race, class, and gender.

Walden explains in the first chapter “Taste and Virtue: Domestic Citizenship and the New Republic” that the first cookbooks helped define the character of American women and linked their domestic roles to their new national identity (28). The first cookbook written and published on American soil was American Cookery in 1796. There were specific, ideologic characteristics communicated to American wives and mothers, defined as “republican motherhood”, which is defined as “the relegation of women’s authority to the ‘private’ sphere” (29). A key component of this was the common understanding “that one’s passions and preferences must be regulated for the good of the republic” (29). Walden uses the examples of the most prominent early American cookery texts, American Cookery (1796), Frugal Housewife (1829) and Virginia Housewife (1824) to illustrate this point. All three of these cookbooks use ‘good taste’ to promote the public virtue of a republican economy and society. They do this by communicating that one must regulate their tastes to the cultural norm and not give in to individual passions. It was from these cookbooks that ‘American taste’ was born. The cookbook authors included local ingredients, such as cornmeal, which held rhetorical significance, creating the ideal of American taste, while avoiding the use of British goods, such as tea.

The first American cookbooks were written by women for women, thereby allowing women to enter a rhetorical space of power typically reserved for men. And while Child, author of The Frugal Housewife, claims she wrote for the poor, her audience was more likely middle class, specifically middle-class white women. Randolph, author of The Virginia Housewife, attempts to build her ethos by stating she came from nothing and wrote this book for the common housewife with information she wished that she had when she was starting out. However, Walden points out that this is a fabrication or at best an exaggeration, as she grew up wealthy and most likely had domestic education.
Walden uses several examples of how these cookbooks served to define the role of the housewife, including the fact that these books often centered on the trope that the husband would bring home a friend from work and she would need to have the skill necessary to whip up a meal at a moment’s notice. These cookbooks also reinforced standards of women still held today, as Walden states, “Early republican society rhetorically cast women as rational beings with the ability to self-regulate,” (34). This demonstrates the continued notion that reinforces the notion that women should be viewed as beautiful objects meant for the male gaze.

Prior to reading this text, I had never thought of how cookbooks held rhetorical significance in defining “good taste”. But Walden provides plenty of research and evidence of how the early American cookbooks defined “good taste” through the use of specific ingredients, an indication of moral character and values. Early American cookbooks described bourgeois middle class tastes as “natural” while working class tastes were rarely described, but rather fictionalized or critiqued.

In the second chapter, “Taste and Morality: Motherhood and the Making of a National Body”, Walden outlines how American cookbooks participated in the rhetorical construction of ideal motherhood (55). Beecher, co-author of The American Women’s Home, “was the first American domestic expert to synthesize the many duties of a domestic woman – “heath, child care, housebuilding, and cooking,” (56). Her book even served as a textbook in women’s seminaries and as a handbook for domestic education. Walden points out that because society tied women’s roles to morality and the church, many of these domestic handbooks took on the sacred significance and states, “Mary Kelley calls the domestic advice literature written between 1830 and 1860 the ‘liturgy of a cult of domesticity” (56). The taste discourse in American cookbooks implied that womanhood in America was white, Protestant and middle class. Women were treated as a homogenous group. Given that women were grouped into this homogenous group, they were also all told what a ‘good housekeeper’, ‘mother’ and ‘wife’ should do. Domestic texts constructed a moral motherhood who exemplified American tastes. Hale, author of The Good Housekeeper (1839) defines ideal motherhood: “The mother appears more in relation to her children than in any other position: therefore, here mind and thoughts should chiefly be given to there are and training” (65).

 

The role of the ‘moral mother’ was to ensure to nurture her children and her role was defined more through her character than her financial state. From a morality perspective, Walden furthers her argument that ideal motherhood is defined by these texts when she quotes child-rearing advice in Mother’s Magazine, “the tastes and habits of children are usually formed from what they see and hear from their mother, they copy her likes and dislikes, and when very young, will often do and suffer much to win her smile of approbation” (67). Walden explains that both Beecher and Mother Magazine rely upon Protestant context to describe women’s work. What I find interesting is that not much has changed on this perspective today. If one is to look in a parenting magazine today, one would find many of the same perceptions and attitudes about motherhood, which further demonstrates the power of the early rhetoric on motherhood in America.

In the third chapter, “Taste and Religion: The Constitutive Function of Southern Cookbooks”, Walden argues that “southern cookbooks in part constitute, rather than merely represent, southern identity (82-83). Few southern cookbooks were published prior to the Civil War. Walden states, “cooking literature not only reflects a culture; it also marks its boundaries or produces that culture” (86). Using Kenneth Burke’s (1897-1993) persuasive process theory that shared meaning and value are attached to “common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, [and] attitudes” (57) Walden posits that audiences can “embody a discourse”. As the southern public emerged, there were limited educational opportunities for anyone outside of the wealthiest of the population, couple that with the lack of printing technology and unequal social structure and the southern cookbook was slow to emerge. Southern cookbooks were less likely than their northern counterparts to emphasize the moral implications of taste. Rutledge published the first southern cookbook, originally titled Carolina Housewife or House and Home: By a Lady of Charleston (95). Walden notes that she had to carefully negotiate her domestic authority with the expectations of a ‘southern lady’, which is why Rutledge states there are no names in the book, explaining, “a true Carolina lady’s name appeared in print only three times in her life: when born, when married and when buried – the legal necessities” (95).

In the fourth chapter, “Taste and Science: Cooking Schools, Home Economics, and the Progressive Impulse” (113) Walden posits that women used taste discourse in cookbooks to contribute to public reform. Walden builds on three arguments in relationship to taste, race, class and morality in domestic writings, including 1) domestic science caused the downfall of the American palate 2) 19th and 20th centuries sparked a new interest in the science of taste and chemical composition of food and 3) even though taste is variable, it didn’t increase the categories of people who can use it to promote their goals. Walden states that American cooking schools set out to rebrand cooking and housework as a characterization of a woman’s love for her family, as until the end of the nineteenth century, servants performed domestic labor. I thought this was a thought-provoking assertion, as I had never thought of how America managed the shift from servants and slaves performing domestic duties to non-hired help, the housewife. Previously, I did not think critically about how or why cooking contributed to the associations of a woman’s maternal identity. In the 1890s, there was an emergence of nutritional science, including the discovery of taste buds contributed to a sensory experience. The discovery of the four basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty and bitter led to the use of taste to contribute to a cultural standard. The concept of “good taste” became correlated with class. Walden states, “Rhetorically, taste now indicates rational food choices based on modern science, while the palate connotes uneducated food choices based on tradition and emotion. In either application, the message is clear: Americans need an intellectual understanding of food and the body to promote good taste and cultural betterment,” (124). This particularly hit a chord with me, as I see how this is still true today. There are certain foods associated with class structures. Walden also correlates the old adage, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” with taste, using the example of rhetorical blending in women’s magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Redbook referencing taste and love. These magazines reinforced that good taste is an intellectual ability that should transcend physical appetite.

 

This is a common theme in Walden’s research, as she mentions several studies that evaluate the rhetoric of taste, valuing intellect, science and self-control over taste, enjoyment and emotional experience. The American middle-class diet was formed as a result of dietary adaptations to better fulfill American Progressive ideals of productivity, efficiency and hygiene (138). Walden says the key term was “simplicity” and was grounded in “New England staples” such as meat, wheat and boiled vegetables (138). Walden encourages us to notice the difference between this “simple” diet and the rich sauces associated with the wealthy or mixed dishes that use beans, grains and vegetables to compensate for a lack of meat, which were correlated with the poor. She uses these examples to posit that taste is cultivated rather than inborn.
In the fifth chapter, “Revisions of Labor and Domestic Literacy in the Early Twentieth Century” (143). Walden explores the narratives of ‘mammy cookbooks’. ‘Mammy cookbooks’ were written by white women who were creating a narrative around the plantation mythology, reinforcing the ‘mammy’ archetype. “Mammy” is a stereotype in America of the southern, black woman who worked for a white family, taking care of the kids and working in the kitchen. She was often portrayed an older, overweight, dark-skinned, loyal, obedient and submissive, the most well-known example being Aunt Jemima, who was introduced at the Chicago’s World Fair of 1893 and came to represent “antebellum romanticism” (154). “Mammy cookbooks” were introduced in the late 1890s, were written entirely in dialect by the 1920s and continued with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. White domestic writers capitalized on the marketability of the southern mammy. Walden explains that these cookbooks served several purposes, including romanticizing the image of the Old South, continuing to impede racial progress and defining a southern community based on print representation (154). The “mammy cookbooks” served to further divide the classes between white and black Americans as the cookbooks removed white women from “culinary “labor”.

In later years, when African American women wrote domestic texts, it served to bridge the divide between classes and races. Walden explains this in regards to the fact that white Americans withheld literacy education, even making it a crime to teach a slave to read. Literacy marked a class distinction and “became imbued with a capitalist sense of possession” (154). By authoring a text, an African American woman could demonstrate that she not only had literacy skill, but she also portrayed authority.
In conclusion, Walden makes a compelling argument regarding how women have used the cookbook as a rhetorical space. Walden guides us through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, providing examples of how the rhetoric used in cooking and domestic manuals has contributed to societal expectations. By organizing the book around different components of taste discourse, Walden is able to present research from other scholars on taste discourse and contribute her additions to their assertions. She makes an excellent argument for how women, who have typically been excluded from public forums, have used the domestic space of cookbooks to contribute powerful rhetoric that has formed cultural norms in America. The issue of the rhetoric of body image and weight in cookbooks is one that Walden could have explored further. She touches on the morality of taste and how cookbooks have contributed to the rhetoric that promotes “good taste” relating to ones’ ability to self-re
gulate. The notion being that a woman can demonstrated her strong self-regulation through weight management and prioritizing how she looks over giving in to her individual temptations. Walden’s research is critical to the field of food, rhetoric and feminism.

Works cited
Nordquist, R. (2018, Aug. 10). What is Burkean Parlor? ThoughCo. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-burkean-parlor-1689042 on January 2, 2019.

Walden, Sarah. Tasteful Domesticity Women’s Rhetoric & the American Cookbook 1790-1940. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018.