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What Is Queer Food?
How We Served a Revolution
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Brief Description
Food in America and Europe has long been shaped, twisted, and upended by queer creatives. Beloved food writer John Birdsall fills the gap between the past and present, channeling the twin forces of criticism and cultural history to propel readers into the kitchens, restaurants, swirling party-houses,...
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See moreA celebrated food writer’s expansive, audacious excavation of the development of modern queer identity and food culture
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Description
Food in America and Europe has long been shaped, twisted, and upended by queer creatives. Beloved food writer John Birdsall fills the gap between the past and present, channeling the twin forces of criticism and cultural history to propel readers into the kitchens, restaurants, swirling party-houses, and humming interior lives of James Baldwin, Alice B. Toklas, Truman Capote, Esther Eng, and others who left an indelible mark on the culinary world from the margins.
Queer food is brunch quiche à la Craig Claiborne, Richard Olney's ecstatic salade composée, and Rainbow Ice-Box Cake from Ernest Matthew Mickler's White Trash Cooking. It's the intention surrounding a meal, the circumstances behind it, the people gathered around the table.
With cinematic verve and prose that dazzles, What Is Queer Food? is a monumental work: a testament to food's essential link to a modern queerness that reveals how, like fashion or tastes in music, food has become a language of LGBTQ+ identity.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781324073796
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 06 June 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 25.0mm
Width: 160.0mm
Height: 236.0mm
Weight: 450g
Pages: 304
Collections
About the Author
John Birdsall is the author of The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard and the recipient of two James Beard Awards for food and culture writing. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Also by John Birdsall
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The Man Who Ate Too Much
In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard's life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet's complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century. At...Hardback$6699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Man Who Ate Too Much
In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard's life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet's complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century. At...Paperback$3799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
What Is Queer Food?
The food on our plates has long been designed, twisted, and elevated by queer hands. Piecing together a dazzling mosaic of queer lives, spaces, and meals, beloved food writer John Birdsall unfolds the complex story of how, through times of fear and persecution, queer people used food to express joy and build community — and ended up changing the shape...Paperback$3799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks
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