Author: Avani

In the cookbook, The American Salad Book by Maximilian DeLoup, there is an obvious nationalistic and triumphant tone of the United States and American culinary cuisine, As seen in the first page of the cook, DeLoup announces “By far the best recipes are those that have originated in the United States and, almost without exception, they are alike inexpensive, elegant and healthy” (DeLoup 5). DeLoup is putting the United States on a pedestal, and this is due to the country’s international standing at the time. In the year 1899, the Spanish-American War had ended and, due to the contents of the treaty, the United States was given the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico as spoils of the war. The United States had improved its political power by gaining territories, but during this time the United States made great leaps in infrastructure and discovered many natural resources. While the Gilded Age exploited many resources and individuals, it was an approach that, while negatively, improved the United States economic and social standing.  

Another essential historical fact that occurred during 1899 was the Open-Door Policy. This American foreign policy basically stated that all countries stated in the policy, especially the United States, would be able to have access to all Chinese trade ports and manage trade in China. This exploitative policy also assisted the United States in becoming wealthier and increased its control in Asia, reinforcing its position as a world power. Due to the United States’ ownership of countries like Puerto Rico and its attraction of individuals of all races and ethnicities, there is an exposure to a variety of cultural cuisines, they did not get the forefront in this cookbook, and probably others as well. In The American Salad Book, there is a section titled, “Miscellaneous Salads” which includes recipes like German salad, Russian salad, Dutch Salad, Japanese salad, Italian salad, Spanish salad, etc. The prideful; tone that this cookbook which highlights American excellence and the purposeful decision to put cultural salad recipes, except for French cuisine, which was internationally renowned, in a section named “Miscellaneous Salads” reveals the impacts that the time period on one’s perspectives. The lack of discourse surrounding cultural cuisine and the nationalistic views towards the United States could have an influence on the history of food and cooking in the United States. 

“The Gilded Age.” Scholastic, https://scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/gilded age.  

“Open Door Policy”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 February 2020, https://www.britannica.com/event/Open-Door-policy

De Loup, Maximilliam. The American Salad Book. G. R. Knapp, 1899.   

I first encountered Vibration Cooking: Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl in my first year seminar. The language of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor is so welcoming and easy to be entranced by, as she is skilled in storytelling. This is the main reason as to why I enjoyed this cookbook so much because she treats this work to creatively express herself, which we have seen in Alice Walker’s piece, was not a reality for many African American women and Smart-Grosvenor includes that that fact.  

Smart-Grosvenor uses her background in storytelling, which is a large part of Geechee culture, to share her culinary experience in a way that does not discount the history of these recipes and the impacts that they have on her life and others. She finds the process of cooking, while a strictly feminine one, also to be one that is spiritual and a part of the shared experience of African American women. Food, as Smart-Grosvenor includes in the section “Demystification of Food”, is a large topic that affects many cultures around the world, and unlike some English or Italian cooks would like to do, no one can take claim over specific recipes and dishes because they are shared across the borders of race and ethnicity. Following this same logic, this insinuates that no one cuisine is superior to another and “[t]here is no mystique. Food is food! Everybody eats!” (Smart-Grosvenor xxxvii). A simple observation like the need to eat is lost in culinary field and the discussion surrounding food, and the raw and uncomplicated approach that Smart-Grosvenor pushes forward in her book allows for readers to gain confidence and interest to making her recipes and cooking in general. It also creates a space for inclusivity and an observation on how race affects food, because the cultural foods of some races and ethnicities are treated in the same regard as those from French cuisine, as an example, in the United States because of the power that certain races and ethnicities hold over others.  

As I read this cookbook in an academic circumstance, I paid more attention to the language and implicit meanings of it more than I would if I were reading it for pleasure. But as I was still a first-year, there is much that I had not learned yet in terms of how to read a text, and I was focused more on the context of the class, which was food and gender. While I did focus on the impacts of race and culture, I did not go into much depth about this significance, especially within the context of diaspora and identity within the United States. Now that I have read this text again, I can appreciate more of her narration of her life not as simple, personal accounts, but stories of themselves that employ purposeful language and organization. For example, the organization of Vibration Cooking is unique as it follows a stream of consciousness of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and while I noticed this importance in my initial reading of the text, in terms of my thesis topic, I would state that it is significant because of the creative outlets in which African American women had access to were mainly storytelling. So, Smart-Grosvenor’s cookbook follows these oral traditions by using language that is universal and colloquial reveals that culture cannot be separated from the discussion of food. The narrative voice also acts as an opposition and revolt against jargon and Western and White claims about culinary and food studies. Smart-Grosvenor states that “[f]ood is not racial” (Smart-Grosvenor xxxv,  not to diminish the significance that food has on cultures, including her own, but to state that there is much more beyond trying to divide food into racial categories, and more of just letting the spirituality that comes with food to bring yourself, and others, joy. 

Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae. Vibration Cooking: or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. Athens, The University of Georgia Press, 2011.  

This is a poster that was released during the Second World War, to promote the conservation of food amongst American citizens. This image depicts a family at a dinner table surrounded by food, some vegetables, fruit, a salt and pepper shaker, and the focal point being a roasted turkey. The table is set with glassware and decorated cleanly with white tablecloths and napkins, but most importantly, the people sitting at that table are White. The image that the government puts forth to remind citizens and soldiers what they are fighting for is a white family dining together. This obvious lack of representation of other racial and ethnic groups in the United States is highlighted in this image and promotes a singular model of a “typical” American family. This poster does not only have racial implications, but also socioeconomic impacts. The poster displays a large family, but they are all well-dressed and all have access to a plentiful amount of food and expensive-looking dishes. This poster leaves out the many individuals in the United States at that time, whose norm did not include access to the resources that the family in this poster have. Lastly, the grandmother is serving the food at the dining table, while the grandfather is standing at the head of the table observing her and the food. This further adds to the descriptions of image of a family of American citizens that the government out forth: white, wealthy, and patriarchal.  

The food featured in this poster is essential to note as well. The dinner does not include any other cultural or ethnic cuisine, simply a roasted turkey, Jell-O, and produce. The lack of variety of food in this poster causes an aversion to any food that does not fit in this picture that the United States’ government framed to be American. This poster paints a picture of what the United States government imagined its citizens to be, which has large and negative impacts on the individuals who do not look like the family in the poster and do not cook the same types of food as them. While this poster was created or proliferated in the 1940s, it acts as a proxy of how the United States approached the topic of food and decided what was normal and what was not. The absence of individuals and foods from different racial and ethnic groups reveals their erasure within the culinary discussion and offers an outlook on what struggles American people of color had to endure within publishing culinary literature or their overall relationship to food. One impact that this poster could have is a rejection or aversion to one’s culture and cultural foods because propaganda portrayed a specific image, to avoid not fitting within societal norms surrounding cuisine and one’s participation within a private space. By highlighting who and what was featured and accepted in American public discourse, can reveal the voices and cultures that are left out, which relates to my research surrounding Americans of various ethnicities and races, and their participation in literature through the lens and focus of food and cooking.  

Freedom From Want; 1941-1945; Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/freedom-from-want, October 13, 2021] 

I looked at the article, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India”, written by Arjun Appadurai and identified the conflicting binary of a national and local cuisine in Indian cooking. Appadurai notes the growth of a national cuisine in India that “permits the growing middle classes of Indian towns and cities to maintain a rich and context-sensitive repertoire of culinary postures, whereas in the matter of marriage, there is the stark and usually irreversible choice between staying within the ambit of caste rules or decisively, permanently, and publicly breaking them” (Appadurai 7). The transcendence of recipes across class systems has allowed the distribution of food and knowledge amongst specific groups to others, causing there to be more freedom amongst the culinary repertoire that a woman has, but also easily complicates the usage of more traditional recipes. Wives are caught in this predicament of learning new recipes and implementing old ones to please the multitude of members in their families. Appadurai asserts that “[f]ood in India is closely tied to the moral and social status of individuals and groups. Food taboos and prescriptions divide men from women, gods from humans, upper from lower castes, one sect from another” (Appadurai 10), so the appearance of a national cuisine grants more social mobility and tolerance towards class systems in India.  

Appadurai then goes on to describe the local cuisines that are present in India and their importance. Local cuisine is something that is featured in the more common of food culture in Indian history, due to its strict view on the act of eating. Local cuisine includes the entirety of all of Indian’s different religious, classist, and other demographic factors in specific foods to certain geographical locations in India. Local cuisine in cookbooks allows for its authors to indulge in sharing their own experiences and a unique outlook on food and cooking, but national cuisine pushes these specific foods and experiences into one category, which “does not mean that the humbler traditions have no cookbooks (theirs are frequently in the relevant vernacular), but they are losing in the struggle for a place in the cultural repertoire of the new national (and international) middle classes” (Appadurai 18). This causes complications for the writing and proliferation of Indian cookbooks, as it negates or does not feature a crucial aspect of Indian food culture, which are the oral accounts that has been passed from mother to daughters, aunt to niece, and most women who reside India or who are of Indian descent. 

This tension between these two different cuisines is also relevant as it connects to postcolonialism, as the newer stride towards a national cuisine appeals to a westernized audience as it encompasses the whole country of India in a single entity and therefore eliminates so much history present in the country by becoming more manageable for its foreign readers of Indian cookbooks. Appadurai speaks of this point at the end of his article, but to expand on his thoughts, by ignoring the rich culture of differences in India and apply that to cookbook, reinforces a colonialist narrative as the cookbook author is changing aspects of themselves and their culture to suit Western readers. 

Appadurai, Arjun. “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 30, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 3–24, doi:10.1017/S0010417500015024.

The motif of death comes up a lot in all of the books and seems to change from a more positive outlook, to one that is dark and macabre as the books progress. Initially in Book 1, the Field puts forth the notion that death is something that should not be feared and paints death to be as comforting as a “tender hand” (Field 8) and a “warm, soft, permeable mound” (Field 8), as expressed in the “Death, men say, is like a sea” poem. This poem uses the reasoning that death help one forget their mistakes and sins that they have committed in their life, as a way to prove the gentle and welcoming nature of death. The same perceptions of death are actually first expressed in the beginning poem of the entire collection, “Mortal, if thou art beloved”, as the poem starts by stating that if “[m]ortal, if thou beloved/Life’s offences are removed” (Field 5), reinforcing the idea that death gives you a fresh start and it is not something that should be frightening. This perspective stays true for the first two books, but changes in the third.

In Book 3 and onward, there are more references to places and members in the underworld that is seen in Greek mythology. For example the poem, “Acheron”, refers to a river in Greece, but also exists in Greek mythology as it was thought to be connected to the underworld and means “River of Woe” (Acheron). The poem depicts the scene of someone guiding their loved one to death, which alludes to the mythical figure, Charon, who is a ferryman who resides in the Underworld and guides souls. The poem offers a unique view on death, which is introduced in the first line “[t]hou must not leave me!” (Field 50). This exclamation literally expresses the desire to stay with one’s partner, but also insinuates on a deeper level, a rejection of death as it is separating two lovers. The following poem, “It was deep April, and the morn”, also picks on the presence of Greek mythology rooted in death and the underworld, by including Lethe, another river in the underworld, and Charon.

The reversal of emotions towards death continues as the poems about death become more melancholy and eerie. One poem to note is, “There comes a change in her breath”, which literally describes a woman dying in her sleep, and instead of seeing the good in death, the poem roots itself in looking at the situation from losing one’s life, as seen in the lines “[o] life at ebb, O life at flow” (Field 51) and “Her life, her breath!” (Field 51). And lastly, the ending poem of the poem collection offers an interesting outlooks on the relationship between life and death through the imagery of a phoenix. Once again, there are positive imagery and emotions being attributed to death in the same way as the beginning of the collection. Like a phoenix dies and leaves its previous life and sins behind, Field asserts the same thing can be done for humans due to death.

This change is essential as it could allude to the health issues that Katharine and Edith had to struggle through, so their concept of death could have changed when getting cancer and knowing that could die and leave each other alone, which ended up happening. It is also essential to note this change in emotion towards death as it offers comfort and solace to those who are dying or have loved ones who are dead, but also does not ignore the pain and emotional turmoil that one feels from loss and death. Finally, the notion of death as a reset to start again, is the most essential, as it could be a self-comforting mechanism that Katharine and Edith developed due to their illnesses.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Acheron”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Feb. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/place/Acheron. Accessed 15 September 2021.

In the poem, “Death, men say, is like a sea”, Field writes of the comparison of death to the sea. The first and third stanza highlights the negative description of the sea, while the second and fourth challenge this imagery by equating the sea to comforting sand and comfortable land. The poem follows a A-A-A-B-C-C-C-B rhyme scheme that places emphasis on the last line of each stanza. The ending words of the last lines of each stanza consist of terror, error, ambition, and remission. These words portray the widely-believed notion that death is something that is frightening, which is addressed throughout the poem, but then negates this idea and promotes the opposite notion, that death is “tender” (Field 8), “warm” (Field 8), and “soft” (Field 8).

The first stanza compares death to a stormy sea that “engulfs mortality” (Field 8). The use of “engulfs” insinuates that death eliminates “mortality”, which in this case would mean humanity, which puts emotions of fear and resentment towards death for “blindingly” (Field 8) taking away life from humans. But, as the second stanza asserts, death is a “pleasant” (Field 8), “tender hand” (Field 8) that protects us from the “wave’s drifted error” (1.5.8),which are all the mistakes or regrets that one has made in their lifetime. The poem progresses to mention that the real torture to humans is living as it destroys our ambition, as seen in the lines “[a]nd transmute to broken surge/Foam-crests of ambition” (Field 8). The fourth stanza ends the poem by referencing back to the “errors” and expresses that “[w]e shall have remission” in death. The last line of the poem is essential as it provides a great deal of relief for all individuals due to the notion that all will be amended and forgiven in death.

The constant imagery of a violent sea versus a comfortable beach articulates the transition from life to death, as seen in the difference between the two images, but reverses the perceived perception of these two entities. The imagery of the sea is enforced by the s sounds that are woven into poem as well as the rhyme scheme, as the A-A-A-B-C-C-C-B rhyme scheme relays a repetition that is disrupted by an anomaly and continues to in a cyclical matter, almost like waves crashing onto a beach. The poem overall offers a positive view of death and loss, while using natural images to support this view.