num_pages: 176
description: Sweet but starchy soft but toothsomeand so easy to peel they just beg to be devouredbananas are one of our favorite foods found everywhere from gas station counters to Michelin star restaurants. Yet for as versatile and ubiquitous as this fruit is today its history is a turbulent one entangled in colonial domination capitalist exploitation sexual politics and even horrific violence. Delving into the bananas past this book traces the complex circumstances of global modernity that perfectly aligned to grant us often at tremendous costs a treat we all now take for granted. Beginning with the bananas origins in New Guinea Lorna Piatti-Farnell follows its pathways to South East Asia Africa the Caribbean and the Americas binding together a millennium of history into one digestible bunch. Focusing especially on the bananas recent past she shows how it rose from a regional staple to a global commodity on par with coffee and sugar. She examines the ways it has been advertised sold and incorporated into popular culture moving from nineteenth-century medical manuals to cookbooks songs slapstick comedy and problematic figures like Miss Chiquita. Wide-ranging but pocket-sized Banana is a culinary and cultural account of a peculiar little fruit that is at once the icon of exoticism and one of the most familiar foods we eat. 
language: English
title: Banana: A Global History
publisher: Reaktion Books