Getting What We Need Ourselves

In the past two decades, as the critical study of food has become an increasingly common tool in the historian's toolbox, scholars of the African American experience have also had success in utilizing it. Dozens of recent monographs have explored the contradictory ways that food, cooking, and agriculture have both impeded and accelerated Black freedom struggles over multiple centuries. Jennifer Jensen Wallach's pithy and punchy Getting What We Need Ourselves seeks to synthesize this growing body of scholarship and present it accessibly to nonspecialist readers. The result is a compelling and engaging introduction to cutting-edge research in Black history and food studies, suitable for undergraduate readers and those outside the academy. The book promises to span more than five centuries of African American food history—no easy task in 154 pages of text. It only partially fulfills this promise, as the lion's share of the narrative favors the twentieth century. One

African american · Art · Ethnology · Food studies · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Toolbox · American History and Culture · Anthropology · Computer Science · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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