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Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean

Sarah Lawson Welsh

How do diasporic writers negotiate their identities through and with food? What tensions emerge between the local and the global, between the foodways of the past and of the present? How are concepts of culinary ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’ articulated in Caribbean cookery writing?

Drawing on a rich and varied tradition of Caribbean writings, Food, Text & Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean shows how the creation of food and the creation of narrative are intimately linked cultural practices which can tell us much about each other. Historically, Caribbean writers have explored, defined and re-affirmed their different cultural, ethnic, caste, class and gender identities by writing about what, when and how they eat. Images of feeding, feasting, fasting and other food rituals and practices, as articulated in a range of Caribbean writings, constitute a powerful force of social cohesion and cultural continuity. Moreover, food is often central to the question of what it means to be Caribbean, especially in diasporic and globalized contexts.

Suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars, the book offers the first study of food and writing in an Anglophone Caribbean context.
  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Features
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 304 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-1-78348-660-1 • Hardback • July 2019 • $147.00 • (£113.00)
978-1-78348-661-8 • Paperback • June 2019 • $51.00 • (£39.00)
978-1-78348-662-5 • eBook • July 2019 • $48.50 • (£37.00)
Subjects: Literary Criticism / Caribbean & Latin American, Social Science / Agriculture & Food, Social Science / Human Geography, Social Science / Comparative Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postcolonialism
Courses: International & Area Studies; Latin American Studies; Central America & the Caribbean, English; Comparative Literature
Sarah Lawson Welsh is Associate Professor and Reader in English and Postcolonial Literatures at York St John University, UK.
Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Chapter One - Famine, Feeding and Feasting: Slave Foods, Provision Grounds and the Planters’ Tables

Chapter Two - White Writings: The Nineteenth Century

Chapter Three - Black Hunger and White Plenitude: Food and Social Order in Two Historiographic Metafictions

Chapter Four - Caribbean Food, Writing and Identity

Chapter Five - KitchenTalk: Caribbean Women Talk about Food

Chapter Six - Reading the Culinary Nation: Recipes Books and Barbados

Chapter Seven - ‘Put Some Music in Your Food’: Caribbean Food and Diaspora

Bibliography

Welsh (York St John Univ., UK) aims to reform and expand the study of Caribbean food through orality, fictions, and nonfictions. Through seven chapters, dating from the Amerindians' foodways to food patterns in 2018, she investigates Caribbean food via oral presentations, literary texts, historical accounts, travel writings, memoirs, and cookery books. Chapters 1 and 2 delve into the foodways and social order from early white accounts of Caribbean foods. The third chapter is a continuum focusing on foods in the 19th century, while chapter 4 focuses on food and the politics of identity through race, class, caste, and gender in literary texts, and chapter 6 replicates the same emphasis using cookbooks from Barbados. Interviews with Bajan women form the core of chapter 5, and the final chapter looks at Rastafarians’ eating habits. Altogether, the text has insightful pictures, an informative foreword, and a solid introduction, including historical background, theories, methodology, and structure, making this an important addition to the study of Caribbean gastronomy.



Summing Up:
Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
— Choice Reviews


Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean is one of the most exciting recent additions to Caribbean cultural studies. Focussing on such varied texts as Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, memoirs, travel accounts and oral histories, Lawson demonstrates the centrality of food in the construction of Caribbean identity—both at home and in the diaspora—and provides novel insights into long-standing debates surrounding the authenticity and commodification of Caribbean culture.
— Henrice Altink, Professor of Modern History and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre, University of York


Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean ranges widely across disciplines and time, drawing together a huge range of materials for all those interested in the significance of food in the Anglophone Caribbean. From fragmentary mentions of the food culture of enslaved people found in travelers' accounts and planters' diaries, to interviews with contemporary Bajan women about their culinary lives, this book demonstrates the always contested and political nature of the region's foodways.
— Diana Paton, William Robertson Professor of History, University of Edinburgh


The first study of food and writing in an Anglophone Caribbean context.

Introduces and critically evaluates key ideas, methodologies and research paradigms.

Includes interviews with subjects of Caribbean heritage to offer a rich account of the traditions in the preparation, cooking and consumption of food.

Includes a long case study of Reggae Reggae products by Levi Roots to illustrate the commodification of Caribbean food culture.

Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • How do diasporic writers negotiate their identities through and with food? What tensions emerge between the local and the global, between the foodways of the past and of the present? How are concepts of culinary ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’ articulated in Caribbean cookery writing?

    Drawing on a rich and varied tradition of Caribbean writings, Food, Text & Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean shows how the creation of food and the creation of narrative are intimately linked cultural practices which can tell us much about each other. Historically, Caribbean writers have explored, defined and re-affirmed their different cultural, ethnic, caste, class and gender identities by writing about what, when and how they eat. Images of feeding, feasting, fasting and other food rituals and practices, as articulated in a range of Caribbean writings, constitute a powerful force of social cohesion and cultural continuity. Moreover, food is often central to the question of what it means to be Caribbean, especially in diasporic and globalized contexts.

    Suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars, the book offers the first study of food and writing in an Anglophone Caribbean context.
Details
Details
  • Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
    Pages: 304 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
    978-1-78348-660-1 • Hardback • July 2019 • $147.00 • (£113.00)
    978-1-78348-661-8 • Paperback • June 2019 • $51.00 • (£39.00)
    978-1-78348-662-5 • eBook • July 2019 • $48.50 • (£37.00)
    Subjects: Literary Criticism / Caribbean & Latin American, Social Science / Agriculture & Food, Social Science / Human Geography, Social Science / Comparative Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postcolonialism
    Courses: International & Area Studies; Latin American Studies; Central America & the Caribbean, English; Comparative Literature
Author
Author
  • Sarah Lawson Welsh is Associate Professor and Reader in English and Postcolonial Literatures at York St John University, UK.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgments

    List of Illustrations

    Introduction

    Chapter One - Famine, Feeding and Feasting: Slave Foods, Provision Grounds and the Planters’ Tables

    Chapter Two - White Writings: The Nineteenth Century

    Chapter Three - Black Hunger and White Plenitude: Food and Social Order in Two Historiographic Metafictions

    Chapter Four - Caribbean Food, Writing and Identity

    Chapter Five - KitchenTalk: Caribbean Women Talk about Food

    Chapter Six - Reading the Culinary Nation: Recipes Books and Barbados

    Chapter Seven - ‘Put Some Music in Your Food’: Caribbean Food and Diaspora

    Bibliography
Reviews
Reviews
  • Welsh (York St John Univ., UK) aims to reform and expand the study of Caribbean food through orality, fictions, and nonfictions. Through seven chapters, dating from the Amerindians' foodways to food patterns in 2018, she investigates Caribbean food via oral presentations, literary texts, historical accounts, travel writings, memoirs, and cookery books. Chapters 1 and 2 delve into the foodways and social order from early white accounts of Caribbean foods. The third chapter is a continuum focusing on foods in the 19th century, while chapter 4 focuses on food and the politics of identity through race, class, caste, and gender in literary texts, and chapter 6 replicates the same emphasis using cookbooks from Barbados. Interviews with Bajan women form the core of chapter 5, and the final chapter looks at Rastafarians’ eating habits. Altogether, the text has insightful pictures, an informative foreword, and a solid introduction, including historical background, theories, methodology, and structure, making this an important addition to the study of Caribbean gastronomy.



    Summing Up:
    Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
    — Choice Reviews


    Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean is one of the most exciting recent additions to Caribbean cultural studies. Focussing on such varied texts as Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, memoirs, travel accounts and oral histories, Lawson demonstrates the centrality of food in the construction of Caribbean identity—both at home and in the diaspora—and provides novel insights into long-standing debates surrounding the authenticity and commodification of Caribbean culture.
    — Henrice Altink, Professor of Modern History and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre, University of York


    Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean ranges widely across disciplines and time, drawing together a huge range of materials for all those interested in the significance of food in the Anglophone Caribbean. From fragmentary mentions of the food culture of enslaved people found in travelers' accounts and planters' diaries, to interviews with contemporary Bajan women about their culinary lives, this book demonstrates the always contested and political nature of the region's foodways.
    — Diana Paton, William Robertson Professor of History, University of Edinburgh


Features
Features
  • The first study of food and writing in an Anglophone Caribbean context.

    Introduces and critically evaluates key ideas, methodologies and research paradigms.

    Includes interviews with subjects of Caribbean heritage to offer a rich account of the traditions in the preparation, cooking and consumption of food.

    Includes a long case study of Reggae Reggae products by Levi Roots to illustrate the commodification of Caribbean food culture.

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