About the Book
A collection of insightful and personal essays on the role of food in our lives
In an age of mass factory farming, processed and pre-packaged meals, and unprecedented food waste, how does one eat ethically?
Featuring a highly diverse ensemble of award-winning writers, chefs, farmers, activists, educators, and journalists, Good Eats invites readers to think about what it means to eat according to individual and collective values. These essays are not lectures about what you should eat, nor an advertisement for the latest diet. Instead, the contributors tell stories of real people—real bellies, real bodies—including the writers themselves, who seek to understand the experiences, cultures, histories, and systems that have shaped their eating and their ethics.
A wide array of themes, topics, and perspectives inform the selections within Good Eats, contributing to an enhanced understanding of how we eat as individuals and in groups. From factory farming and the exploitative labor practices surrounding chocolate production, to Indigenous foodways and home and community gardens, the topics featured in this collection describe the wider context of sustenance and ethical choices.
Good Eats will encourage you to become more mindful of what and how you eat—and to consider the larger systems and cultures that shape that eating. These essays turn mundane meals into remarkable symbols of how we live, encouraging each of us to find food that is both sustaining and sustainable.
Contributors include Ross Gay, DeLyssa Begay, Lynn Z. Bloom, Michael P. Branch, Nikky Finney, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Barbara J. King, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Leah Penniman, Adrienne Su, Ira Sukrungruang, Tina Vasquez, Nicole Walker, Thérèse Nelson, Lisa Knopp, Jane Brox, Maureen Stanton, Taté Walker, and many others.
About the Author :
Melissa A. Goldthwaite (Editor)
Melissa A. Goldthwaite is Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of many books, including Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics, Books That Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal, The Norton Pocket Book of Writing by Students, The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing, and The Norton Reader.
Jennifer Cognard-Black (Editor)
Jennifer Cognard-Black is Professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She is the author and co-editor of several books, including Books that Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal. She has published her essays and short fiction in numerous journals, including Story, Versal, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and she has two lecture series with The Great Courses as well as an Audible Original, "Food & Fiction."
Review :
A wonderful starting place to think about how to eat ethically. (Kirkus Reviews (starred)) While mindful eaters will find many familiar concepts, the engaging first-person narratives gently remind us not to turn a blind eye to these edible dilemmas while also cutting ourselves some slack. (Booklist) Good Eats explores people's relationships to food through personal stories of love, connection, and emotional literacy. It argues that, in its purest form, food is about security, with love learned through recipes, people healing from grief through sweet food memories, and reconnecting with the land. (Foreword Reviews) It's easy to think about ethical eating as a diminishment, to think that we need to reduce our lives in order to save the planet. As anybody who has ever attempted change on ethical grounds in their lives knows, it can be hard; it can be awkward; it can be frustrating. It can also be singularly gratifying and joyous. While we don't have a definitive solution to "How do we eat ethically?", the voices brought together in Good Eats begin the work of piecing together an answer. (Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals) In Good Eats, authors from all walks of life relate their daily struggles—moral as well as economic—to eat diets that promote human and environmental health and meet deeply held principles of food equity and social justice. Their accounts of these struggles are sometimes funny, always moving, and entirely recognizable by anyone trying to eat ethically. (Marion Nestle, author of Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics) This collection will entertain and enlighten readers interested in food writing, environmental issues, and BIPOC experiences. - Margaret Heller (Library Journal) Good Eats considers deep questions about our connection and access to food, the stories we tell about it, and their effects on our bodies, communities, and planet. (Poets & Writers)
