Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically

A collection of insightful and personal essays on the role of food in our lives

In an age of mass factory farming, processed and pre-packaged meals, and unprecedented food waste, how does one eat ethically?

Featuring a highly diverse ensemble of award-winning writers, chefs, farmers, activists, educators, and journalists, Good Eats invites readers to think about what it means to eat according to individual and collective values. These essays are not lectures about what you should eat, nor an advertisement for the latest diet. Instead, the contributors tell stories of real people--real bellies, real bodies--including the writers themselves, who seek to understand the experiences, cultures, histories, and systems that have shaped their eating and their ethics.

A wide array of themes, topics, and perspectives inform the selections within Good Eats, contributing to an enhanced understanding of how we eat as individuals and in groups. From factory farming and the exploitative labor practices surrounding chocolate production, to Indigenous foodways and home and community gardens, the topics featured in this collection describe the wider context of sustenance and ethical choices.

Good Eats will encourage you to become more mindful of what and how you eat--and to consider the larger systems and cultures that shape that eating. These essays turn mundane meals into remarkable symbols of how we live, encouraging each of us to find food that is both sustaining and sustainable.

Contributors include Ross Gay, DeLyssa Begay, Lynn Z. Bloom, Michael P. Branch, Nikky Finney, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Barbara J. King, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Leah Penniman, Adrienne Su, Ira Sukrungruang, Tina Vasquez, Nicole Walker, Thérèse Nelson, Lisa Knopp, Jane Brox, Maureen Stanton, Taté Walker, and many others.

Author: Jennifer Cognard-Black
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 01/09/2024
Pages: 376
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.90h x 6.90w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781479821792

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2023
Booklist 11/01/2023 pg. 3
Library Journal 12/01/2023 pg. 94
Foreword 12/27/2023

About the Author
Melissa A. Goldthwaite (Editor)
Melissa A. Goldthwaite is Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of many books, including Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics, Books That Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal, The Norton Pocket Book of Writing by Students, The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing, and The Norton Reader.

Jennifer Cognard-Black (Editor)
Jennifer Cognard-Black is Professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She is the author and co-editor of several books, including Books that Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal. She has published her essays and short fiction in numerous journals, including Story, Versal, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and she has two lecture series with The Great Courses as well as an Audible Original, "Food & Fiction."