photo via sarah.of.a.lesser.god
This feature (for now in the custody of sarah.of.a.lesser.god) is our way of sharing those book titles, both fiction and nonfiction, that have been standouts in recent reading, and hopefully getting some from our readers in return. The focus is primarily, but not necessarily exclusively, on books concerning women and feminism, and/or written by female authors.
My Pick: The newly published The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. As noted above, the book club isn’t exclusively centered around books written about or by women, and this book really struck me as being special. It’s mainly a collection of essays about food in America written during the Great Depression by members of the Federal Writers Project (FWP). The essays have never been published before, and while Kurlansky adds some of his own notes, the book is by and large devoted to the printing of the FWP writings. It’s a fascinating glimpse at how food influences a society’s social fabric, and also takes the reader back to a time when American food was not the same everywhere you went — there no McDonalds, no Starbucks, no Trader Joe’s, no takeout Chinese food or pizzerias in every city.
In an age when prepackaged meals at a grocery store were a convenience not yet available, it’s unsurprising that a number of the essays include recipes. So if you want to learn how to make Long Island clam chowder or okra gumbo or Kentucky eggnog or Minnesota-style Norwegian meatballs, all you have to do is flip through the pages. But most of the essays revolve more around the social customs relating to food, things such as communities gathering for possum cook-outs and maple sugar tapping. Looking through the essays provides a window into how societies build secular rituals devoted to food.
It would be easy to get nostalgic about all this were it not for the fact that the essays are almost exclusively about white people. While the writers may focus on the difference between Norwegian-american cuisine and Cajun cuisine, there is minimal mention of the recipes of, say, Mexican-Americans or Chinese-Americans. And almost all of the FWP writers were white, although the most notable exception to that was surely Zora Neale Hurston, who took on an assignment from the FWP to make ends meet. Kurlansky does a good job of detailing the challenges she faced as a Black woman trying to do her assignment in Florida.
For anyone who’s interested in the book, I’d also recommend Kurlansky’s awesome book Salt, which is about (yup, you guessed it) salt and how it influenced history. Seriously. It’s a terrific read.
What say you? Have any titles to share with the Harpies and your fellow readers? Note: while I tend to focus on books, your input does not strictly have to be a literary recommendation if you have something extraordinary that is in another medium such as music or film that you would love to let us know about.
Did you hear how the Federal Writers Project’s editing team for the book to be published wanted to cut out the recipes that were too Jewish? And that the book never saw the light of day?
Ooh, I really like Mark Kurlansky. I will have to get a copy of this. He does a good job portraying the links between food and culture, esp. in COD, his first book. I also really enjoyed THE BASQUE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, which is a fairly slim narrative about the Basques. (I took it with me on a trip to Spain and then was mad that I never actually got to go to the Basque region).
@becky wait what?!?! He wrote that basque thing! I loved that one. Must read food book now!
@rodriguez: Yeah, the plug was pulled on the whole program before anything could be finished. The entry of America into WWII took funding away from a lot of the New Deal programs and the FWP was the first to be completely shuttered. And you’re right, there’s definitely a lack of the kind of Jewish recipes/cultural annotations that my grandparents grew up with.
@Becky: You also HAVE to read Salt. It’s amazing.
Ooh, I have a feminist book to recommend! NO MORE NICE GIRLS by Ellen Willis, music critic and original rad fem. It’s a collection of essays she wrote during the 1980s. Even the stuff that seems a bit dated at first–Reagan, the beginning of the drug war, anti-pornography feminism–is super relevant, and I learned a lot about the roots of sex-positive feminism, which I think I’ve misunderstood until now. She does write a bit about the Oedipal complex–cringe!–but otherwise very right on.
Sounds interesting, I love Kurlansky although I found his novel dragged.
I have one and only recommendation this month – do anything you can to get hold of a copy of Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. It’s published in the US in October but is out in the UK now. It’s huge admittedly (650 pages) and yes it’s a novel about Tudor England and specifically about Thomas Cromwell, More and the whole Henry/Anne Boleyn/ Katherine of Aragon divorce BUT bear with me because it is the best book i have read in years. She’s an incredible writer anyway but this is something else – I tend to agree with veteran editor Diana Athill who essentially compares it to Middlemarch. I can’t remember the last time I read something so fully realised and beautifully written and just all round incredible. Ok rant over.
Spark – Ellen Willis taught me feature writing as part of my journalism MA at NYU in the 90s, she was absolutely incredible. When I moved back to the UK we lost contact and i was very sad to learn that she died of cancer recently. She was one of the best teachers i ever had and really generous about lending her books to people. She had this great Village apartment that was just floor to ceiling with books.
@emilyanne: Okay, that book sounds thoroughly awesome. I love reading about medieval/Elizabethan England, so that’s right up my alley. I’m trying to give fiction more attention than I have in the past.
@Spark: I really like the idea of reading feminist writings from the Reagan era when so many liberal movements were stifled. That’s going on the book shopping list!
emilyanne, that’s exactly how I imagine her after reading her essays. I’m glad to hear it’s true! Her writing is so smart and sophisticated without being stuffy.
sarah, it’s especially interesting because a lot of it is about the rise of the Christian right and the pro-life movement. There were a lot of moments where I felt like she could have been writing yesterday instead of in 1981. A little depressing, actually.
I recently finished reading “Honour Killing,” an incredible and heartwrenching book by Turkish journalist Ayse Onal. If you are feeling strong, I highly recommend it. It is the most powerful and thought-provoking book I have read in a while.
Over a number of years, Onal interviewed men imprisoned for murders of female relatives who had done something seen as tarnishing the family’s honor. Most of the men are remorseful; I think only one is not. The situations leading to the murders are complicated, painful, and particularly frustrating to read about as a feminist. (The murders do not seem to simplify much for the families either.) The tellings do not absolve the men of their crimes, but Onal describes the communities these murders take place in in a way that illuminated, for me, the staggering complexity of the problem(s) as well as giving a very clear illustration of men suffering due to misogyny and the oppression of women.
Not so much a beach book.
I just mentioned this in another comment, but this is the thread for it, really: I’m halfway through “The Golden Notebook” by Doris Lessing, and it’s fabulous. (Apparently the Institute for the Future of the Book had a project last year where a number of women authors all read TGN together, carrying on a conversation about it online, in the margins, at http://thegoldennotebook.org/ ; I’ll definitely be checking that out when I finish.)
Anyway. It’s fantastic.
@Person: That sounds absolutely FASCINATING. I’m usually not one for light beach reads anyway, so I may be using an Amazon gift card toward purchasing that. Thanks for the rec!
@x. trapnel: That is one of my dad’s favorite books of all time. Maybe I’ll ask him for a copy for Christmas.