Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically
Edited by Jennifer Cognard-Black and Melissa A. Goldthwaite
New York University Press, forthcoming 2024
Featuring a highly diverse ensemble of award-winning writers, activists, educators, chefs, farmers, and journalists, Good Eats invites readers to think about what it means to eat according to our values. These essays are not lectures about what you should eat, nor an advertisement for the latest diet. Instead, the contributors tell the stories of real people—real bellies, real bodies—including the writers themselves, who seek to understand the experiences, families, cultures, histories, and systems that have shaped their eating and their ethics.
From gardening as an alternative to factory farming, to the indigenous cultures surrounding salmon and the corporate cultures surrounding chocolate, the topics featured in this collection expand our understanding of what ethical eating can be. Poets like Ross Gay and Nikky Finney muse lyrically on the role of sustenance in their lives. Other contributors describe efforts to change how food is made. Farmer and food sovereignty activist Leah Penniman celebrates both ancestral seeds and wisdom when discussing her Afro-Indigenous farming and forestry practices. In the high desert, Michael P. Branch details his frustrating-yet-humorous attempts to grow a garden in the high desert with his young daughters. And professional chef Thérèse Nelson shows how hot sauce represents joy, expression, and magic for many Black people. Each contributor offers insightful discussions of the role food plays in our lives.
The essays in Good Eats turn mundane meals into remarkable symbols of how we live, encouraging each of us to find food that is both sustaining and sustainable.
Praise for From Curlers to Chainsaws
“While we don’t have a definitive solution to ‘How do we eat ethically?,’ the voices brought together in Good Eats begin the work of piecing together an answer.”