In honor of the centenary of the 19th amendment, a delectable new book that reveals a new side to the history of the suffrage movement. We all likely conjure up a similar image of the women’s suffrage movement: picket signs, red carnations, militant marches through the streets. But was it only these rallies that gained women the exposure and power that led them to the vote? Ever-courageous and creative suffragists also carried their radical message into America’s homes wrapped in food wisdom through cookbooks, which ingenuously packaged political strategy into already existent social communities. These cookbooks gave suffragists a chance to reach out to women on their own terms in nonthreatening and accessible ways. Cooking together, feeding people, and using social situations to put people at ease were pioneering grassroots tactics that leveraged the domestic knowledge these women already had, feeding spoonfuls of suffrage to communities through unexpected and unassuming channels. Filled with charm and wit and actual historic recipes (“mix the crust with tact and velvet gloves using no sarcasm especially with the upper crust”) that evoke the spirited flavor of feminism and food movements, All Stirred Up reactivates the taste of an era and carries us back through time to when women enfranchised themselves through the subversive and savvy power of the palate.
Nonfiction
All Stirred Up: Suffrage Cookbooks Food and the Battle for Women’s Right to Vote
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2019
Discussion Questions
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