Book cover of Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century

Book description

Winner of the 2013 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association
Winner of the 2013 Association for the Study of Food and Society Book Award
Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series

The act of eating is both erotic and violent, as one wholly…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Racial Indigestion as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book starts with an unforgettable vignette from a silent film produced in 1900: an alligator swallows an unsuspecting Black child while he is fishing by the river. A man comes to the rescue, slitting the gator open and lifting the child out of its stomach. From there, Tompkins shows how eating culture became a part of racist ideology in the United States. I gobbled this fascinating book up in just a few sittings.   

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