Feminist Food Stories Feminist Food Journal

A note from the editors: It is hard to believe that it was almost two years ago that we first published this powerful conversation with the feminist activists behind a virtual cooking class organized to raise funds for Feminist Workshop, an NGO based in Lviv, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. We’re not sure we would have believed you if you had told us then that the war in Ukraine would still be raging more than two years on. We also would not have wanted to believe you if you had told us just how much the scale of global conflicts would have grown in the last two years. We’ve thought about this conversation often as we’ve watched the horrors unfolding in Gaza over the last 150+ days. As one of our interviewees, Fenya, said:
I’m walking around here in Brussels and in London and seeing everyone with little banners for “welcome Ukrainians”. But then when we have these ongoing crises in Afghanistan and we have the US and Western powers actively aggravating that. And people needing to leave and people being unsafe we don’t allow them in, we allow them to drown at sea. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t support Ukrainians, but it means that we need to be a little more reflective on whose lives are worth saving. 
Although it can be painful to watch and observe how little has changed since early 2022, we believe, as Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi says, that bearing witness is a feminist act. Like in all conflicts, food has been central to this war: its weaponization by Israel, as it deliberately starves the population of Gaza to death, and its link to atrocities, as people waiting for aid were slaughtered in what is now grimly known as the “Flour Massacre”. We hope revisiting this podcast will offer you new insights into food, war, feminist organizing, and maybe provide a faint glimmer of hope — that for all the world’s violence, we can still find generative, creative ways of working together that don’t bolster the military machine.
This podcast was written and produced by Zoë Johnson with original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen.
SHOWNOTES
Transcript
Read the show transcript here.
Resources
* Learn more about Feminist Workshop and donate to their feminist and queer mutual aid in Lviv via GoFundMe;
* Check the list of feminist, LGBTQI, disability justice groups in Ukraine and donate to them directly;
* Read the Solidarity Statement and Call for Action; and
* Follow Sonaksha Iyengar, who did the beautiful graphics for Cooking Up Resistance.
Featured Audio Clips 
* Woman at war by Benedikt Erlingsson (2018): Ukrainian folk singers
* Feminist Workshop: “Sex, Freedom, Money: What more do feminists want? (“СЕКС, СВОБОДА, ГРОШІ: ЧОГО ЩЕ ХОЧУТЬ ФЕМІНІСТКИ?”)
* NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday: “Ukrainian women are volunteering to fight, continuing a tradition”



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In this podcast, Troy Bright, a self-taught orca researcher, shares his knowledge of orcas’ rich matriarchal societies, their unique food cultures, and how our human food systems are putting this way of life at risk. This includes over-extraction of salmon, a key food source for orcas which Indigenous nations managed sustainably for thousands of years before colonization; Isabela dig into the links between the historical treatment of Indigenous women in the salmon canning industry and high levels of food insecurity among Indigenous and racialized women in British Colombia today.


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In this episode of Feminist Food Stories, Isabela sits down with Alison Hope Alkon, Associate Professor of Teaching in the Community Studies Program in the Department of Sociology at UCSC and co-editor of A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power, and Resistance in the City. Published in July 2020 by NYU Press and focused on large to mid-sized cities in Canada and the US, the edited volume explores the complex links between food, urban development, gentrification, and the right to the city.
Isabela and Alison reflect on the book’s findings to discuss why we should include food in conversations about gentrification, and vice-versa; how to understand gentrification as an outcome of cultural or structural drivers; how well-intended activities like urban agriculture and food activism can inadvertently displace vulnerable communities, and how gentrification links to gender and racial justice.
Credits
This episode features research, writing, and sound editing by Isabela Vera and original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen.
Big thanks to all contributors to A Recipe for Gentrification, whose insights and analysis were instrumental in shaping this interview.
Transcript
A full transcript of the episode is available online here.
Further reading
Books
Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability. (2011). Edited by Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman.
Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities (2013). Mindy Thompson Fullilove.
Journals
Anguelovski, I. (2015). Alternative food provision conflicts in cities: Contesting food privilege, injustice, and whiteness in Jamaica Plain, Boston. Geoforum, 58, 184-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.014
Anguelovski, I., Brand, A. L., Ranganathan, M., & Hyra, D. (2022). Decolonizing the Green City: From Environmental Privilege to Emancipatory Green Justice. Environmental Justice, 15(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0014
Bonotti, M., Barnhill, A. Food, Gentrification and Located Life Plans. Food ethics 7, 8 (2022). https://rdcu.be/dhzRR


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

Esta es una versión en audio del artículo "Sin ellas no hay maíz ni país", escrito (y narrado aquí) por María Villalpando para nuestro número de TIERRA.
You can also read and listen to the original English-language version.
En México, el trabajo y conocimiento de las tortilleras, — mujeres que hacen y venden tortillas de manera tradicional — son fundamentales para conservar la agrobiodiversidad y las prácticas alimentarias tradicionales. Al reflexionar sobre el uso de la leña para la transformación de los alimentos en el campo mexicano, encontramos el particular vínculo entre las relaciones de género, la construcción de soberanía alimentaria y el uso de recursos energéticos para la transformación del maíz en alimento. 
Por María Villalpando | Traducido por Ignacio Ahijado
María Villalpando es una estudiante de doctorado mexicana en la Universidad de California, Berkeley. María está interesada en las complejidades de los espacios rurales de México y entiende la escritura y la investigación como prácticas socialmente comprometidas.
Ignacio Ahijado es traductor, mediador intercultural y gestor de comunicación en Nested CoLab. Actualmente vive en Lisboa, enclave atlántico desde donde busca construir puentes entre personas, culturas y territorios.


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In this episode, FFJ co-founding editor Zoë Johnson had the honour of speaking with Melanie Allen and amanda david about their work with the incredible Black Farmer Fund. They cover power in our food systems, the complexities of cultivating land in a capitalist settler-colonial context, and much more.
Credits
This episode features writing and sound editing by Zoë Johson; Research by Zoë Johnson & Isabela Vera; and original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen.
Audio clips include Dr. Alice Ragland, from her recording of “More Radical Than It May Seem” from Feminist Food Journal, and Karen Washington, from the video “Community Wealth Building” by Black Farmer Fund.
Transcript
Full transcript of the podcast available here.
Shownotes
Learn more about Black Farmer Fund on their website, where you can also watch the powerful “Black Farmers Thriving” video series. For more information on investing, you can email invest@blackfarmerfund.com.
Check out amanda david’s initiative, Rootwork Herbals and read about the Jane Minor BIPOC Community Medicine Garden.
Further Readings
“The Great Land Robbery” (Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic)
“Help Black Farmers, Who Know Hyperlocal Doesn’t Mean Fancy” (Tressie McMillan Cottom, The New York Times)
“Race, Land, and the Law: Black Farmers and the Limits of a Politics of Recognition” (Brian Williams and Tyler McCreary, Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice)
“The USDA Is Set To Give Black Farmers Debt Relief. They've Heard That One Before” (Emma Hurt, NPR)


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

In this episode of Feminist Food Stories, editor Isabela sits down with Charlotte Coté, Professor in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington and author of A Drum in One Hand, A Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast. 
They discuss the role of gender in Indigenous food sovereignty in both the past and present, the risks of “culinary imperialism” in blanket calls to veganize our diets, how social media enables Indigenous peoples to tell their own stories about food, and the ways that going back to the land with a “colonized” mindset can lead to missed opportunities for true connection.
Transcript
Full transcript of the podcast available here.
Shownotes and further resources
Coté, C (2022). A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast. University of Washington Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv289dw4p
Coté, C. (2022, Oct 17). ḥačatakma c̓awaak (everything is interconnected). Indigenous food sovereignty, health, resilience and sustainability. Talk given at President’s Dream Colloquium on Indigenous Peoples and Local Community Perspectives on Sustainability and Resilience. Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, Vancouver.
Coté, C. (2022, Oct 6). “c̓uumaʕas. The River that Runs through Us”. Talk given at the Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.
Coté, C. (2022, Sep 28). UO Today interview: Charlotte Coté (Tseshaht First Nation), Amer. Indian Studies, University of Washington. University of Oregon.
Coté, C. (2022, March 16). Exploring Indigenous Food Sovereignty with Dr. Charlotte Coté. MOHAI History Café. Download program transcript: https://adobe.ly/3PGcnPs
Coté, C. (2022, March 3). Charlotte Coté with Dana Arviso: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the NW Town Hall Seattle.
Coté, C. (2019). hishuk’ish tsawalk—Everything is One: Revitalizing Place-Based Indigenous Food Systems through the Enactment of Food Sovereignty. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 9(A), 37–48. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2019.09A.003
Nast, C. (2020, November 8). This Inukj Throat Singer is Bringing Cultural Pride to TikTok. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/shina-novalinga-indigenous-inuk-throat-singer-tiktok


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe