While male celebrity chefs and food writers seem to dominate the airwaves and column inches, food nevertheless starts with women. That is what this collection curated by journalist and food writer Charlotte Druckman strives to emphasize to readers, as she includes the voices of 115 women involved in every stage of food production and presentation.
In essays and in interviews, quotes and ephemera, Druckman raises questions about who is heard and seen and who is not in the contemporary landscape, who gets to have a voice, and where the food world erases people. Women on Food explores racism, the #MeToo movement, gender biases and ties between food and culture that we rarely hear about. The various formats spliced together help highlight who is visible, who is seen as odd and who is conspicuously missing.
In this collection, Druckman above all celebrates women's place in and shaping of the food industry of today. Women on Food considers how black female food writers encounter everyday racism simply by eating out, as well as experiences of connecting to one's hereditary food cultures in the face of major life changes, what it is like to be a female farmer or to reshape the culture of a city through food. What readers will find in this book are stories to enrich their connections to their own habits of consuming both food and food writing. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer