Literary Food Studies

The copyright page of Kan Hang’s stunning Man Booker International prize-winning novel, The Vegetarian, is about the only thing within the covers that reads like a recipe. The book’s genealogy lists its constituent parts like ingredients:

The coherent and, presumably, stable novel text, Ch’aesikjuuia, published in 2007 grew out of “three separate novelettes” published earlier. The English translation, in turn, appeared in two separate versions—the original, published “in Great Britain, by Portobello Books”, and the “somewhat different” version published in the American paperback edition, to which I will refer throughout the rest of this post.

I pause on such arcana to highlight the degree to which the novel does not address either conventional foodways or alternative dietary choices as the organizing principle in its narrative arc. Instead, this novel provides a multi-perspective depiction of the physical toll of mental illness on its sufferers and those closest to them.

Because cooking and eating are the most mundane of tasks shared by people who cohabit and share a space, a sudden alteration in a person’s habits or preferences in either or both areas, such as the choice to become vegetarian, interrupts the rhythms that govern intimate life. The husband, brother-in-law, and sister of our titular character, Yeong-hye, all question their own assumptions about what constitutes normal consumption and how we use food to gauge our health upon being told of her refusal to eat meat. Mr. Cheong, the unsympathetic husband, observes:

As far as I was concerned, the only reasonable grounds for altering one’s eating habits were the desire to lose weight, an attempt to alleviate certain physical ailments, being possessed by an evil spirit, or having your sleep disturbed by indigestion. (22)

Though others are more concerned with Yeong-hye’s well-being, nobody questions this assumption that variations from a meat-centric diet are only acceptable as medicinal adjustments to one’s everyday routines.

Rice is by far the most discussed food item within the novel; it is mentioned ten different times across the three sections. Beef and fruit come a close second, each with nine references. The third most-mentioned food item is also a tie between pork and soup, each of which appears eight different times. All told, 48 different food items are mentioned throughout the text. What is the proper reaction to reading about delectable dishes when the eponymous character finds the same disgusting?

The references to food items throughout the novel become problematic especially as Yeong-hye’s crisis worsens. Since food items mentioned span across all alimentary preferences, appealing to vegans and meat-eaters alike, the role of food as sustenance in this novel is to highlight what separates the reader and Yeong-hye’s nightmarish delusions. The reader’s appetite can be aroused, which according to the logic of the narrative means the reader has a healthy hold on everyday life. Yeong-hye’s abstinence separates her reality from ours, and though we have access to the images that haunt her, that situational irony only renders the reader more powerless to stop her inevitable decline.

The significance of the title, then, is that Yeong-hye’s abstinence from consuming animal flesh is the primary way through which others detect there is something wrong. . Several scenes could trigger readers who have struggled with eating disorders and/or suicidal tendencies, so this novel is not for everyone. However, despite its disturbing narrative arc, The Vegetarian’s superb achievement is Kang’s deeply humane portrayal of Yeong-hye’s efforts to heal herself, even if her attempt to find salvation through behavior modification is ultimately misguided. This novel stayed with me long after I turned the last page.

Works cited:

Kang, Han. The Vegetarian. Trans. Deborah Smith. New York: Hogarth, 2015.

Angel A Rivera’s La rabia útil de los muertos (una novella de zombis), adds an original dimension to the tried and true formula of the un-dead hungering after human brains. In this slim novel, Rivera proposes the timely notion that our own consumption of fast food is in itself monstrous and thus we should not be surprised why our flesh, chock full of preservatives and chemicals, is so appetizing to these post-apocalyptic fiends.

It is hard to innovate within the genre of zombie fiction, but the ways in which Rivera imagines humans stumbling upon mechanisms to both domesticate and co-exist with the mindless un-dead are fundamentally related to his critique of the Standard American Diet. In its embrace of domesticating, or even enslaving, these neutralized but stil supernumerary creatures, La rabia útil de los muertos most closely approximates the symbiosis imagined by Shaun of the Dead.

It’s depiction of the decimation that a virus such as the one unleashed in partner university labs in both Puerto Rico and in Connecticut is remarkably effective.  Rivera provides sufficient details about his secondary characters that their deaths are not only frightening to read about, but also stir the emotions. . Not since the Syfy show Helix has the geographical isolation of the island of Puerto Rico been imagined as both an ideal laboratory space and an inescapable death trap; the same dynamic holds true in this narrative.

To analyze the connection between the novel and the fast food industry in more detail than I have done here would be to engage in major spoilers, and I will not stoop to do that. I will only say that it did make me think twice about how to feed my family when I’m pressed for time.

The novel is only available in its original Spanish. I highly recommend it for zombie-lovers who are either fluent in Spanish or who want to practice their language skills. Be prepared to look up Puerto Rican slang. It’s well plotted, the action is nicely paced, and there are a few surprises I won’t even mention that will make this a rewarding read.

Rivera, Angel A. La rabia útil de los muertos (una novella de zombis). San Juan, Puerto Rico: Disonante, 2016. 152 pp.

This panel proposes to add literary studies as an active contributor to the exciting and productive interdisciplinary food studies conversations that are the hallmarks of the yearly meetings of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS).

This year’s conference will be held at Occidental College from June 14-17 in Los Angeles, California.

The panel welcomes abstract submissions from scholars, grad students, or undergraduates analyzing any manner of literary representations of repasts and/or foodways, especially those focusing on the conference theme of “Migrating Food Cultures: Engaging Pacific Perspectives on Food and Agriculture.” The goal of this panel is to engage memoir, popular fiction, and literature as legitimate sources of knowledge about foodways, migration, and their interconnection.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Food memoirs by authors from the Pacific Rim countries
• Novels about food, chefs, cooks, waiters
• Fiction discussing the overlap between immigration and foodways
• Restaurant fiction dealing with employment of immigrants
• Poetry by or about migrants and their foodways
• Flash fiction or short stories on any of these topics

Abstracts no longer than 250 words should be e-mailed to vhallora@indiana.edu by January 15, 2017.  Submissions should also include:

• submitter’s name,
• organizational affiliation, and
• status (e.g., undergraduate, graduate student, postdoc, faculty, independent scholar)

The panel will receive notifications of acceptance by AFHVS/ASFS by Wednesday, March 15, 2017. Attendees must be members of AFHVS or ASFS at the time of the conference.

Herman Koch’s novel, The Dinner, ably translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett, is set primarily in a fine dining establishment where two brothers and their wives discuss the aftermath of their respective sons’ complicity in a reckless act of violence. Much has been made of how the different courses of the evening’s meal frame the action in the present and serve to contain the increasingly frequent and more in-depth flashbacks that fill in the context for the frequent silences during the meal.  However I would like to suggest here that it is the dessert ordered by Serge Lohman, one of the four central candidates, the dame blanche, that most clearly encapsulates the action that drives the plot during the course of the evening.  

The much maligned dame blanche makes its appearance late in the novel, in the dessert course.  However, it serves as an evocative symbol for much that occurs. The readers’ first exposure to it comes courtesy of the obsequious manager’s description:

‘The blackberries are from our own garden,’ said the manager. ‘The parfait is made from homemade chocolate, and these are shaved almonds, mixed with grated walnuts.’ (217)

This detailed narrative deconstruction of the dessert into its constituent parts is simultaneously an accurate representations of how restaurants try to increase the overall value of their meal offerings, but it also  a perverse commentary on nativism.  Neither the fruit nor the chocolate are imported, and their local origins rein scribe the importance of the domicile even though the dessert itself is being consumed at a commercial establishment away from home. This speaks to the not-so latent xenophobia that runs through the plot as a recurring motif, describing not just the Dutch, but extended to the French as well in our narrator’s estimation.

Whereas his affluent and influential brother, Serge, a successful politician with national ambitions considers dessert just the natural end of a meal, Paul distances himself from such rigid and conventional notions, not only claiming to disdain sweets in general but, then, going so far as to take the dessert’s plainness as a personal affront: 

My brother always chose the mos ordinary desserts on the menu. Vanilla ice cream, crepes with syrup, an that was about it. I sometimes thought it had to do with his blood sugar level, the same blood sugar level that left him high and dry in the middle of nowhere at the most in opportune moments. But it also had to do with his lack of imagination (218)

For his part, Paul claims no special culinary sophistication himself; his air of superiority regarding his brother has to do with the fact that Serge eats very fast, barely tasting it, whereas he himself consumes his food at a more moderate pace. Throughout the dinner, Paul keeps eyeing the uneaten dessert ass it melts and becomes less appetizing; he equates its gradual loss of integrity with his brother’s moral failure as a husband, since Serge’s wife, Babette, defiantly refuses to eat what her husband ordered for her.  Paul reads the ice cream for signs of the deterioration of their marriage, being utterly convinced that he is the only Lohman destined to know and enjoy “happiness.”

Therein lies the final aspect of the dame blanche‘s symbolic role within the narrative.  Dessert by its very luxurious and indulgent nature is itself the promise of happiness and delight at the end of a grown-up meal. In fact, the blandness that so offends Paul is absolutely the common denominator of all childlike treats: vanilla ice cream with chocolate shavings. What could be more simple than that? However, the name of the treat suggests an association with the women at the table, not with the men. It’s intended recipient, Babbette, rejects it.  However its appellation describes her aptly, at least in her role as mother. Babbette and Serge have two biological children, a boy and a girl, and an adopted son from Burkina Faso. Paul constantly makes snide remarks about their transracial adoption, calling the family’s motives into question by suggesting it was all politically motivated. To Beau, her son, then Babbette is indeed a “dame blanche” or a white lady.  

Paul’s wife, Claire, can also be encompassed within the meaning of the confection since clarity is often associated with whiteness. For Paul, and for their son, Claire is a sweet but commanding presence within the household. Unlike Babbette, however, who cries all the way through dinner in the same way that the uneaten ice cream slowly weeps as the evening wears on, Claire is so cold she will not melt.  When faced with adversity, she remains clear-headed and calm and thus emerges as the novel’s most surprising monster.

The Dinner is a delicious read, though it will definitely not suit all tastes. One must have a strong stomach to get through to the end, and the conclusion is satisfying, though bracing.

Herman Koch.  The Dinner. Trans. Sam Garrett.  Hogarth: New York, 2013.

Even before the wide-spread adoption of “ag-gag” laws banning the filming of animal cruelty in farms without the owner’s consent, British-born artist Sue Coe has used her considerable drawing and illustrating skills to capture deeply moving scenes of the indignities to which many an animal is subjected to on its journey to our collective dinner plates. By sharing her scathing criticism of factory farming and inhumane slaughterhouse practices through the medium of illustrated books and graphic (non-fiction novels), Coe and her narrative collaborators succeed in evoking childhood as a time of innocence where cuddly, anthropomorphic animals loomed large in our collective imagination.

The contrast she elicits between our adult experience which is jaded to the pain of our non-human companions and the innocence of childhood as a time of deeply engrained empathy with our animal spirit guides is not new. William Blake himself enshrined this tension in his brilliant illuminated collection, Songs of Innocence and of Experience. And, it is directly with Blake that Coe’s images demand comparison, though I fear the text that accompanies them pales in comparison with the Romantic bard’s verse.

Whereas Blake’s visual imagery complements and magnifies the achievements of his texts, Coe achieves a coherent visual narrative that almost dispenses with the need for annotation or explanation in its ability to convey a swift and visceral condemnation of the wanton cruelty and disregard built into an industry increasingly mechanized and unfeeling: the modern food system, with its factory farming and assembly line slaughter.

As an introduction to those unfamiliar with Coe’s work, I would like to suggest the following pairing. The magic of the images is such that its composition fascinates even as its content repels. It appeals to both adults and children, a fact I discovered when my 9 year old son sat mesmerized trying to make sense of the spectacle before him rather than fleeing in terror.

The first of these is, Dead Meat (1996), which I would describe as a graphic (non-fiction) novel. The reason I assign this genre to it because it chronicles the sights she saw when she toured slaughterhouses and witnessed various species as they waited to be dispatched to the hereafter. Because she had with her only a sketchbook, rather than a camera, her presence was not deemed as dangerous or damaging to the company’s reputation. Thus, we the readers benefit from seeing the results of what factory owners, through their lack of art or visual cultural capital, dismissed as childish or insubstantial.

The framing essay by Alexander Cockburn provides some helpful context to readers unfamiliar with Coe’s biography or her previous work. But it is through the artist’s powerful images, and the direct and unaffected prose through which she chronicles her interviews with workers on the killing floor, owners, and farmers that readers realize the mounting drama of a deeply dysfunctional food system that continues to supply our protein staples without much intervention to correct the wrongs upon which this work sheds light.

The second volume I would like to recommend, Sheep of Fools, moves outside of the American context of her earlier work and instead showcases how the global food system facilitates an even greater, because lesser known, universe of pain and suffering by introducing the concept of oceanic travel as an intermediate step between the farm, the feeding lot, and the slaughterhouse.

This time, the volume is much slimmer, but its visual impact remains undiluted. The book addresses the traffic in live sheep from Australia to the Middle East for slaughter according to the principles of halal butchering. What’s most impressive in this volume is how little shame it actually casts upon the religious principles which brought about this inhumane industry. Coe is at pains to contextualize this objectionable butchering practices among others that characterized the England of old as well as certain elements of the industrialized food system. Yet the title of the volume, with its obvious pun, draws attention to this uniquely cruel form of gaining access to fresh meat.

The least successful aspect of this volume is its slavish dedication to verse as its chosen medium of textual communication. Song cycles don’t usually take place on the page and for good reason. The musical accompaniment can elevate merely mundane observations to the reign of the sublime. That kind of lifting is missing here and sorely needed.

While the fiery red palette and the somewhat childish faces of the humans who are depicted in this picture book fiercely convey Coe’s condemnation of these practices, the various songs and poems that accompany them hit a false note. They fall flat and alienate the viewer from the visual drama on the page. But, this is indeed a volume worth checking out for the pictures. After all, not everything that can be said on this topic needs to be limited to mere words.

Works Cited

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. in Blake’s Poetry and Designs. Ed. Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.

Coe, Sue. Dead Meat New York: Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1996.

Coe, Sue and Judith Brody. Sheep of Fools: A Song Cycle for Five Voices. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics, 2005.

There is a disturbing new trend in food writing, one which subverts the prevailing logic of the hospitality industry by embedding deeply personal insults within a highly public medium of transmission: the restaurant receipt. The offending textual inscriptions, whether penned by hand or typed in to blend in with the rest of the computer generated corporate template, the check has now become a potentially sinister vehicle for somewhat anonymous venom directed at the specific server or diner involved within the financial transaction that culminates a purchased meal.

The invective’s relationship to the act of eating is at most circumstantial, in that it is typically composed within the confines of an eating establishment or aimed directly at the purveyor of one’s repast. However, the content of the insult itself goes beyond food and attacks the appearance, behavior, identity (racial, ethnicity, gender), national origin, or marital status of the victim. However, as befits the times, the revenge wreaked upon the offender exposes the scribbler’s ignorance and prejudices for all the world to see and, presumably, to condemn by “publishing” such vitriol via social media. The end result, unsurprisingly, leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

A few recent cases in point illustrate the nadir of this trend, which l contend constitutes its own kind of food poisoning. Take the anti-Mexican comment typed within the body of a customer’s order at a Mexican restaurant in Denver. The receipt itself was written in Spanglish, and both the customers at whom this was aimed and the restaurant owner are Mexican American.  Or, the apparent hoax at a Red Lobster restaurant in Tennessee, in which the waitress claimed a customer wrote the n-word in a receipt, and the non-tipping patron in question sued her in court for slander. A waitress who wrote a homophobic slur on a bar tab brushed it off by saying it was meant in jest, without apologizing. These disputes simultaneously serve as testaments to the age–in which protests against institutionalized racism and the urgent need for immigration reform have prompted the activism of Black Lives Matter, the Dreamers, and those working towards Marriage Equality, but also sparked reactionary xenophobia and homophobia among petty vandals who think nothing of defacing a public document as a means of venting their ignorant views.

Sadly, the real debate a lot of these receipts should give rise to is whether the practice of tipping within the U. S. restaurant industry should continue, a topic newly relevant given the prominence of the Fight for Fifteen movement nationally, which calls for paying restaurant employees of all stripes a living wage.

Even when the comments written on receipts are positive, such as when an anonymous Olive Garden diner paid for a Muslim family’s meal on Christmas and expressed his/her admiration for the “beautiful family,” or a restaurant owner who gave a 15% discount to a family for praying before eating their meal and then was pressured into stopping such a “discriminatory” practice, the use of a receipt to convey such sentiments seems to violate our long-held gastronomic social contract of avoiding certain topics, such as politics or  religion, during meals to ensure a peaceful and pleasant experience at the table.  Other recent examples of receipt writing that have gone viral include efforts to reward breastfeeding in public, fat shame a female customer, and protest the hiring of foreign nationals or just mere humans.

In closing, this post is a call for diners and wait-staff to refrain from treating receipts like the comments section on an online publication. Let’s all strive to enjoy our meals and leave one another to digest in peace. And, let the food writing to those Yelpers or Urban Spooners who actually have something to say about the attributes of the food on order, rather than those who eat it or bring it to them.

As we groggily sit down to breakfast while reading or watching the day’s news, few of us stop to consider where the oranges in the juice we drink each morning came from. However, Florida’s Naturals Growers juice co-op would like to change all that. The company first came to prominence with a series of folksy ads featuring a helpful farmer in a sunny grove placing a carton of orange juice into the eagerly outstretched hand of a mother reaching out through her grocery store’s refrigerator section. Early in 2012, the juice co-op debuted an aggressive new ad campaign to replace the neighborly image they had previously cultivated pitching their product as being “As close to the grove as you can get,” with a somewhat paranoid question addressed to the public at large: “Where does your juice come from?”[1] This new tone dispenses with the friendly emphasis on the direct connection between growers and consumers in its previous ad campaign, and replaces it with a challenge that puts the juice drinker on the defensive, wondering: do I know where my juice comes from? Should I care?[2] This marketing strategy casts aspersions on the ingredient sourcing practices used by the company’s direct competitors by implying that the use of juice from oranges grown outside of the United States is un-patriotic, imperils national food security, or takes jobs away from American orange growers.

The Florida’s Naturals co-op website features a “Where does your juice come from?” quiz which allows visitors to the site to guess which of three brands of orange juice does not use imported orange juice. The correct answer is, obviously, their own. However, when one clicks on the pictures of the competitors’ juice bottles, the images flip over to show the back view and zoom in on the items’ country of origin label (COOL), a requirement that dates back to the Tariff Act of 1930 and, in a rather interesting turn of affairs, is overseen not by the Food and Drug Administration, but by U.S. Customs. The “Where does your juice come from?” ad campaign appeals to the latent xenophobia or isolationist tendencies of Florida’s Naturals’ consumers by manipulating the visual proof of their competitors’ compliance with U.S. law, the country of origin label, against them. The zoomed-in pictures of bottles of Simply Orange and Minute Maid Orange juice feature a red circle drawn around the words “US/Brazil,” whereas the image of the carton of Florida’s Naturals Premium Orange juice depicts the tagline “Product of USA” framed by a miniature American flag. The flag conveys patriotism, a sentiment denied to the other two companies even though they combine the juice from U. S. grown, as well as Brazilian, oranges in their bottles.[3]

This implication is made manifest even more explicitly once a visitor clicks on the “correct” choice of Florida’s Natural Premium Orange juice. Not only does the question repeated at the top of the page, with the words, “GROWN ONLY IN THE U.S.” visually depicted in bold orange all caps, but the textual “answer” that follows this question, which is already framed on the left side of the screen by an image of the orange juice carton, proudly declares: “Florida’s Natural premium orange juice uses only oranges grown right here in the U.S. / All of our oranges are grown by U. S. Farmers in Florida. And only Florida.” This emphasis on the orange’s “native” grown status casts aspersions on the “foreign” grown oranges blended into the brand’s competitors’ orange juice, thereby implying that this alimentary intermixing of orange juices of different national origins is, at worst, unpatriotic, and at best, a “diluted” inter-Americanism resulting from trade policies like those codified by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Tellingly, the ad campaign says nothing about the nationality of the workers who harvest the orange crops in Florida. While the orange juice inside the package may have all been grown in the United States, the likelihood is that foreign nationals harvested it, whether they are in the country as part of the guest worker program, or they work without documents.

One more echo between the anti-importation rhetoric of the orange juice ad campaign and contemporary political discourses surrounding immigration as a dire problem in need of reform is the website’s emphasis on the company’s primary affiliation as that it maintains with the state of Florida, rather than with the entire United States.[4] While the company’s brand has always touted its connection to the Florida orange industry, which is overwhelmingly dedicated to juice production rather than whole fruit consumption as is California’s, the conflation of “U. S. Farmers” with those producing juice fruits “in Florida. And only Florida” comes at a time when individual states have taken steps to try to mitigate what they perceived was the negative economic impact of undocumented immigration through local legislative measures like Arizona (SB 1070), Alabama (HB 56), and Indiana (SEA 590).[5] The New York Times reported that in 2009, 48 states had passed either legislation or resolutions opposing illegal immigration in some measure. While the state law passed by Arizona and signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer (SB1070) was by far the strictest at the time, Alabama soon passed legislation that surpassed it and provided the template for similar immigration measures in other states including Mississippi and Missouri, according to National Public Radio, who has called described the trend as part of a Southern political strategy meant to make life so uncomfortable and difficult for undocumented people that they would leave the states that had enacted such laws, either to return “back home” wherever that might be or move to states with less restrictive policies. That logic at first appeared to have worked in Alabama, where thousands of undocumented laborers as well as legal immigrants who feared the local climate was becoming too intolerant of their presence left the state. The news media broadcast powerful images of crops rotting in the fields and on the trees because there were no workers to pick them during the spring and summer harvests immediately after strict laws were passed in Alabama and Georgia, among others. Lax enforcement of the laws, as well as court-blocked elements meant that laborers returned for the fall harvest, according to Associated Press reporter Kate Brumback.

Key provisions of the Arizona legislation were struck down by the Supreme Court in June, 2012, with Chief Justice, John Roberts, siding with the majority decision in affirming that the power to enforce the nation’s immigration laws rests with the federal government, and not with individual states. The Supreme Court struck down the most stringent portions of the laws passed by Arizona and other states with similar provisions in their immigration legislation, those which would lead to profiling of anyone who looks “un-American,” even as it authorized local law enforcement to check on the immigration status of persons detained on suspicion of having committed a crime.[7] That decision caused a ripple effect across the nation, but especially in other Southern and Southwestern states, who either amended their own similar legislation or else decided not to bring similar bills to the floor. In light of such legal reversals, enforcement of such restrictive anti-immigration laws has been lax, and laborers have returned to the fields thereby facilitating the uninterrupted flow of the American food system.

In the aftermath of such efforts, a larger menace has arisen that threatens the orange harvest more than the possibility that all undocumented workers would leave the state: citrus greening disease caused by bacteria spread by the Asian citrus psyllid. The United States Department of Agriculture has dedicated a whole page on its official website to update the public on what the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is doing to combat this threat. The first part of its efforts is to educate the public about what citrus greening is, but the rhetoric it uses to convey the extent of the peril facing the domestic citrus industry plays into what I am arguing is the larger xenophobia that pervades the American citrus industry:

The bacteria that cause HLB[Huanglongbing]—three species of Liberibacter—probably originated in China in the early 1900s. In countries where the disease is endemic, citrus trees begin to decline within 5 to 8 years after planting and rarely bear usable fruit.

First detected in Florida in 2005; by 2008, it had been identified in most of the citrus growing counties in the state. Despite everyone’s best efforts, HLB now literally threatens the survival of Florida citrus and is a potential threat to the entire U.S. citrus industry. (www.ars.usda.gov)

The federal government has responded swiftly, funding both research and containment efforts. The Associated Press reports that the citrus greening has been spotted in California as well, though in a very small scale, thus truly underscoring the potential impact of this infestation on the citrus industry. The team of scientists working to find a solution for dealing with HLB is made up of experts from all over the world; according to the USDA website, one particular collaboration between ARS scientists in Ft. Pierce, Florida and colleagues from Japan and Viet Nam focuses on trying to understand how interplanting guava with citrus may prevent the spread of HLB. Globalization has now become synonymous with environmental degradation, and the free movement of capital, products, and foodstuffs around the world negates one of the chief engines of biodiversity and ecological health, which is isolation. This logic shows how an element of isolationism and paranoia can slip into the rhetoric of locavorism and health food movements. Ideas of ecological health and hygiene can take on the forms of eugenics, which drove the immigration debates up to and beyond the Second World War.

My concern, however, is with the reference to the disease’s origins in China at the dawn of the twentieth century. The timing of the disease’s origins calls to mind the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which spearheaded a wave of increasingly restrictive immigration legislation in the United States that culminated with the passage of the 1929 National Origins Act, which eliminated all immigration from Asia.[9] Scientists have not paused on this historical connection or its possible implications in today’s China-phobic political discourse.[10] However, the citrus industry faced a huge setback once before, during what literary journalist John McPhee has called “the great freeze of 1962” when “the leaves all turned manila and fell to the ground. Much of the fruit fell to the ground, too, but a lot of it still hung eerily, and with a macabre beauty, in the trees. They looked like odd Christmas trees covered with bright orange balls” (Oranges 32). McPhee’s evocative description of the disaster sets the stage for a paradigm shift that still affects the citrus industry today. The 1962 freeze was followed by more in the late 70s and 80s, which had the combined effect of opening the floodgates to the influx of Brazilian frozen concentrate orange juice (FCOJ) imports which led to the xenophobic Florida Naturals campaign discussed earlier. As climate scientists Kathleen A. Miller recounts:

Before 1962, Florida had been the world’s primary source of FCOJ. Since that year, Florida’s output has been supplemented steadily by a steadily increasing Brazilian FCOJ production. From the start, Brazilian orange juice processors have focused their energies on producing for the FCOJ export market. (“Climate” 140)

This state of affairs explains why orange juice cartons feature blends of American and Brazilian juices, rather than merely those sourced from Florida. This is not only legal; it has become the norm, with the notable exception of Florida’s Naturals. California’s oranges produce less juice per fruit and, thus, they cater to the whole fruit market rather than the juice industry. The new threat posed by HLB stands to shift the balance of power even further in the international citrus industry, which will likely give rise to more nativist rhetoric.

Notes

[1] My comments refer specifically to the ad campaign found at the company’s main website: http://www.floridasnatural.com/ Web. January 29, 2013.

[2] This line of reasoning feeds into contemporary discussions about food’s carbon footprints and the preference for eating locally raised foods. It also deflects attention away from the hit that orange juice’s reputation as a health food has taken in recent years. Not only have the net carb-phobes disparaged it, but so have the enemies of sugary drinks. Commercial orange juice is a highly processed food trying to cling to their “natural” aura in the context of a market that is quickly shutting out liquid calories in favor of bottled water. Orange juice can never be local in 90% of the country.

[3] 10 ISC 1304(a) and 19 CFR part 134. My info comes from http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074567.htm Web. January 29, 2013.

[4] Ironically, the California navel orange agricultural industry has its origins in Brazil, as John McPhee recounts in his jaunty cultural history, Oranges. He notes that in 1870, an American Presbyterian missionary sent some navel orange trees to the U.S. Department of Agriculture which then distributed the trees for free. An enterprising California housewife took advantage of this opportunity to experiment with a new cultivar. As McPhee tells it, “In 1873, Mrs. Luther C. Tibbets, of Riverside, California, wrote for a pair of trees, got them, and planted them in her yard. Mrs. Tibbets’ trees caught the attention of her neighbors and, eventually, of the world. From them have descended virtually every navel orange grown anywhere on earth today”(11). This brief citrus genealogy demonstrates the dynamic movement of foodstuffs from the Global South (Brazil) up to the North (California) and across the globe. However, American cultural colonialism is still at work linguistically, in ways that downplay or obscure the Brazilian origins of this quintessentially West Coast citrus.

[5] Arizona’s State Bill 1070 is known as the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.” Alabama’s immigration law (House Bill 56) is stricter than Arizona’s. It’s called “Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.” Indiana’s immigration law, “Senate Enrolled Act 590,” was modeled after Arizona’s, and I mention it here since it is what is in effect in the state where I have composed this book.

[6] http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration-and-emigration/arizona-immigration-law-sb-1070/index.html Web. February 19, 2013.

[7] For more on the motivations for, and impact of, the Chinese Exclusion Act, see Harvard University Library’s Open Collections Program’s webpage “Chinese Exclusion Act.”

[8] China-phobia entered the 2012 presidential campaign with Republican candidate Mitt Romney calling for more retributive economic policies. The Atlantic ran a story analyzing the perceived “dangers” of Mitt Romney’s anti-China campaign rhetoric in February of 2012.