The Desk Book Club: Two Books Down! 📚
And here's the reading and discussion schedule for the next.
I must say that the best part of the newsletter relaunch for me has been, hands-down, the conversations we’re having in the Desk Book Club. A global gathering of really freaking smart and kind folks—it’s the kind of generous conversation around the big and small of foodways that I’ve long craved.
If you’d like to join us for the final two books of 2024 and have a say in what we read in 2025—my current ideas include M.F.K. Fisher, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Lisa Heldke, Ashanté M. Reese, Sidney Mintz, Fabio Parasecoli, Sabrina Strings, and maybe Bourdain, to be a bit cheeky?—become a paid subscriber.
For May and June, we’ll be reading Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala. The first discussion thread will take place on May 31. You can buy it from Archestratus, our bookstore partner, for 20 percent off.
The next pick will be Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them by Dan Saladino, which we’ll read in three parts—it’s on the longer side!—from September to November.
We’ll be reading through page 171 for the first section of Longthroat Memoirs discussion on May 31, and then we’ll finish it for a discussion thread on June 21. Per the usual format, we will have a Zoom chat that Sunday, June 23, at 2 p.m. EST.
It’s an essay collection, so please also feel free to hop around the book!
I wanted to pose one of Whitney’s comments from the last discussion thread to all the readers, now that some of us have read both Small Fires and Food in Cuba—it’s nice to consider there are threads throughout these texts!
“Thanks everyone for a really great Zoom the other day! I really appreciated hearing everyone's perspectives and especially from people who have actually been to Cuba (I have not). I'm enjoying the selection of books, and while this book is a lot different than Johnson's Small Fires, I noticed a connection in the conclusion of Garth's book with Johnson on the idea of agency and refusals that I am interested in thinking about more and curious if anyone else has thoughts on this. Garth writes, "The struggle for a good life is not just a way of upholding and striving for Cubanidad; the insistence on living a good life and the ability to continue consuming a decent meal in the face of the changing food system is also a form of resistance to state power and a way of talking back to the state. We might also call this a form of refusal" (161). Johnson writes, "Refusing the recipe as a cook and at the table also expresses yearning to participate in world-making" (117). These connections between expressions of agency and world-making capacity through food (and refusal) are really interesting to me, even in such different contexts. I'm curious if and how similar ideas might come up in the other two books.
Also, someone (I forget who, I'm sorry!) mentioned at the end of the Zoom discussion that Garth never really describes what a decent meal tastes like (it's unclear whether this was something she asked/discussed with participants). I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier, but as soon as you said this it stood out quite a bit. There is maybe this unsaid idea that the taste matters less than what the food signifies. I do kind of wish there was more description or reflection on taste/the experience of the decent meal; I'm not sure what that would look like in the book or how it might change it.”
My reflection is that I cannot wait to join for Eating to Extinction. Just picked up Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating which I highly recommend!
I really enjoyed reading Food in Cuba and I just started Longthroat Memoirs. While reading Food in Cuba, I always thought about the taste aspect even though you mentioned "There is maybe this unsaid idea that the taste matters less than what the food signifies." I think the only time taste was mentioned was when the meat was bad and some people decided to get past it if it was cooked a certain way. I also wished there was more insight into taste while enjoying a decent meal but I do not think this was the point of what a decent meal is and the study of this book. Outside of the book, when I think of my own idea of a decent meal that is traditional or nostalgic, I try to make to recreate the meal with the closest ingredients as possible so that in the end, all the flavors are there. In the case of the book, it seems as if it's important for all the elements to be accessible, rice, meat, beans to make it a decent meal.