Black hunger
Subtitle: food and the politics of U.S. identity
By: Doris Witt.
Series: Race and American culture
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 292
Subjects: African American women -- Race identity.; African American women -- Ethnic identity.; African American women -- Social conditions.; Food -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Racism -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Description: The creation of the Aunt Jemima trademark from an 1889 vaudeville performance of a play called "The Emigrant" helped codify a pervasive connection between African American women and food. In Black Hunger, Doris Witt demonstrates how this connection has operated as a central structuring dynamic of twentieth-century U.S. psychic, cultural, sociopolitical, and economic life.

Witt draws on recent work in social history and cultural studies to argue for food as an interpretive paradigm which can challenge the privileging of music in scholarship on African American culture, destabilize constrictive disciplinary boundaries in the academy, and enhance our understanding of how individual and collective identities are established.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-281) and index.