Nourishing resistance : stories of food, protest, and mutual aid

From the cooks who have quietly fed rebels and revolutionaries to the collective kitchens set up after hurricanes and floods, food has long played a crucial role in resistance, protest, and mutual aid. Until very recently, food-based work—steadfast and not particularly flashy—slipped under the radar or was centered on celebrity chefs and well-funded nonprofits. Adding to a growing constellation of conversations that push against this narrative, Nourishing Resistance centers the role of everyday people in acts of culinary solidarity. Twenty-three contributors—cooks, farmers, writers, organizers, academics, and dreamers—write on queer potlucks, BIPOC-centered farms and gardens, rebel ancestors, disability justice, indigenous food sovereignty, and the fight against toxic diet culture, among many other topics. They recount bowls of biryani at a Delhi protest, fricasé de conejo on a Puerto Rican farm, pay-as-you-want dishes in a collectively-run Hong Kong restaurant, and lemon cake cooked in a New Jersey disaster relief kitchen. They chronicle the communal kitchens and food distribution programs that emerged in Buenos Aires and New York City in the wake of COVID-19, which caused surging food insecurity worldwide. They look to the past, revealing how “Bella Ciao” was composed by striking women rice workers, and the future, speculating on postcapitalist worlds that include both high-tech collective farms and herbs gathered beside highways. Through essays, articles, poems, and stories, Nourishing Resistance argues that food is a central, intrinsic part of global struggles for autonomy and collective liberation. From the cooks who have quietly fed rebels and revolutionaries to the collective kitchens set up after hurricanes and floods, food has long played a crucial role in resistance, protest, and mutual aid. Until very recently, food-based work-steadfast and not particularly flashy -s lipped under the radar or was centred on celebrity chefs and well-funded non-profits. Adding to a growing constellation of conversations that push against this narrative, Nourishing Resistance centers the role of everyday people in acts of culinary solidarity and mutual aid. Twenty-three contributors-cooks, farmers, writers, organizers, academics, and dreamers-write on queer potlucks, BIPOC-centered farms and gardens, rebel ancestors, disability justice, indigenous food sovereignty, and the fight against toxic diet culture, among many other topics. They recount bowls of biryani at a Delhi protest, fricasé de conejo on a Puerto Rican farm, pay-as$1]you-want dishes in a collectively run Hong Kong restaurant, and lemon cake cooked in a New Jersey disaster relief kitchen. They chronicle the communal kitchens and food distribution programs that emerged in Buenos Aires and New York City in the wake of COVID-19, which caused surging food insecurity worldwide. They look to the past, revealing how 'Bella Ciao' was composed by striking women rice workers, and the future, speculating on post-capitalist worlds that include both high-tech collective farms and herbs gathered on the side of highways. Through essays, articles, poems, and stories, Nourishing Resistance argues that food is a central, intrinsic part of global struggles for autonomy and collective liberation. From the cooks who have quietly fed rebels and revolutionaries to the collective kitchens set up after hurricanes and floods, food has long played a crucial role in resistance, protest, and mutual aid. Until very recently, food-based work—steadfast and not particularly flashy—slipped under the radar or was centered on celebrity chefs and well-funded nonprofits. Adding to a growing constellation of conversations that push against this narrative, Nourishing Resistance centers the role of everyday people in acts of culinary solidarity and mutual aid. Twenty-three contributors—cooks, farmers, writers, organizers, academics, and dreamers—write on queer potlucks, BIPOC-centered farms and gardens, rebel ancestors, disability justice, indigenous food sovereignty, and the fight against toxic diet culture, among many other topics. They recount bowls of biryani at a Delhi protest, fricasé de conejo on a Puerto Rican farm, pay-as-you-want dishes in a collectively-run Hong Kong restaurant, and lemon cake cooked in a New Jersey disaster relief kitchen. They chronicle the communal kitchens and food distribution programs that emerged in Buenos Aires and New York City in the wake of COVID-19, which caused surging food insecurity worldwide. They look to the past, revealing how "Bella Ciao" was composed by striking women rice workers, and the future, speculating on post-capitalist worlds that include both high-tech collective farms and herbs gathered on the side of highways. Through essays, articles, poems, and stories, Nourishing Resistance argues that food is a central, intrinsic part of global struggles for autonomy and collective liberation. Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Foreword: Cindy Barukh Milstein Introduction: Wren Awry On Feeding Others as an Act of Resistance an interview with Cheshire Li Cooking Revolutions in the Popular Pot: Virginia Tognola The Contentious Biryani: Rice, Nation, and Dissent: Paridhi Gupta La Morada: When a Restaurant Is a Sanctuary: Alyshia Gálvez The Way It Could Be: Toward Food Sovereignty and against State Dependence: Luz Cruz The Anishinabeg’s Call to Protect the Moose: Laurence Desmarais On Farming as a Practice of Abundance and Liberation an interview with mayam “Remaking the Commons”: A History of Eating in Public: Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma From “Building the Bases for a Different Life: An Interview with Hong Kong Anarchists Black Window”: Lausan Collective and Black Window The Wine Bottle’s Intrinsic Blight: Lisa Strid Plastic: Katie Tastrom On Fat Activism and the Power of Being an Outsider an interview with Virgie Tovar Everywhere That Feeling Lived: Making a Queer Food Podcast: Nico Wisler The Hearth of Revolution: Shayontoni Rhea Ghosh Rehearsing for Rebellion: On “Bella Ciao” and Italy’s Radical Rice Weeders: Alessandra Bergamin On the Food of the West Virginia Mine Wars an interview with Mike Costello Notes on Utopian Failure in the Commune Kitchens: Madeline Lane-McKinley Abundance and Other Lessons on the Lower East Side: Wren Awry Uthando Luvunwa Apha: A Postcapitalist Love Story: te’sheron courtney Are You a Kindergarden Abolitionist? A List of What’s Possible in the Next Economy: sumi dutta Seeds Planted by Nana Tota: Nelda Ruiz Acknowledgments About the Authors "Through essays, articles, poems, and stories, Nourishing Resistance argues that food is a central, intrinsic part of global struggles for autonomy and collective liberation."-- Provided by publisher