The Desk Book Club this year could be described as the year of truly examining the “food is political” platitude, digging into what that really can mean and what it looks like in various contexts. Whether we are talking to Anny Gaul about tomatoes in Egypt, or, this coming Tuesday, Michael Shaikh about the connection between war, genocide, and the erasure of cuisines.

As Shaikh told Laurie Woolever in an interview for Flaming Hydra when his book The Last Sweet Bite came out: “Food itself is not political, but the people who put it there, their politics, the story behind it, that is political.” 

As a former human rights researcher for various organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Shaikh noticed connections between the loss of language, culture, and cuisine that occur through various modes of violence, whether war, colonialism, or climate change. These types of violence also disproportionately affect women and girls, who are at the forefront of food culture.

Through deep examinations of six particular instances of cuisine erasure—Czech Republic, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh, the Uyghurs, Bolivia and the Andes, and the Pueblo Nations—Shaikh centers the personal stories and recipes of people who have experienced terrible loss. He writes their recipes down for posterity. He reckons with the way Partition disconnected him from his father’s Pakistani heritage.

There was a quote here that really called out to me: “Restoration as a form of innovation.” The connection between gastronomic “innovation” and the protection of culture is something I think a lot about, especially in Puerto Rico, where the cuisine is inextricable from the effects of colonialism and there is also a tangible fear that its evolution is a form of erasure. It’s about the idea that a cuisine should be preserved in amber or be lost totally. 

Shaikh, in his chapter on Bolivia and coca, writes about how it is being reclaimed in many ways, from fine dining to beer brewing to cocktails. Usually, these are served in places that many Bolivians cannot afford. This is a tension I am excited to discuss, a tension I am always generatively but futilely trying to sort out. The final chapters, on the Pueblo Nation and the effects of atomic bomb testing on diet and disease in New Mexico, are required reading amid the calls I’ve been encountering for renewed trust of industrial foods: It’s a function of privilege to trust agribusiness and it’s part of a very specific culture to enjoy its products—indeed, to make them your own food culture—which I think is a conversation that needs to be had. This is a book that recognizes the beauty of gastronomy as a human need, not a bourgeois affectation.

This chapter reminded me of two pieces I published in 2024: Hilary Landa on Gustu in La Paz, and Carmen Posada Monroy on coca in Colombia (this piece was anthologized in Escribir gastronomía 2024). 

Below the paywall, you’ll find the Zoom link for Tuesday’s coming meeting. You can sign up here if you’re not a member or if you’d like an email reminder 30 minutes beforehand. Members can find the code for free access here. The full video will come out in a few weeks for members, and you can find the entire series archived here.