Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2014

Publication Title

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Volume

14

Issue

4

Pages

1-2 pp.

Abstract

Simply put, Eat It: Sex, Food and Women's Writing surpasses its rather immodest claims. This is no mean feat, for the editors allow that they have collected short stories, nonfiction shorts and poetry that, as the back claims offers, hinge "on the carnal." More than that, the gathered works purportedly address the ways in which experiencing food entails nothing short of "power, biology, social obligation, experimentation, nourishment, pain and pleasure." The authors treat the topics, ranging from the politics of potatoes to tricks for field dressing deer, with a blend of seriousness and humour befitting the material. What becomes clear in reading the nearly three-dozen pieces is that the editors' claim to merely "cook up a conversation with some seriously smart ladies [. . .] on the most relevant aspects of control and consumption and croissants and cookery culture" understates while mirroring the ambition of the collections and its constituent parts (8). Although the book is divided into sections that map onto public and private functions and encounters with food, the real success of the book comes in conveying the critical commonplaces-especially women's alienation from their bodies-through unexpected means.

Comments

© Marc Ouellette. Posted with permission of the author.

Original Publication Citation

Ouellette, M. (2014). [Review of Eat it: Sex, food and women's writing by N. Baute & B. Goldberg]. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 14(4). http://reconstruction.digitalodu.com/Issues/144/Ouellette.shtml

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