Feminist Food Stories

Hi everyone — Isabela here with our second-last edition of this autumn’s SPOTLIGHT series. Today, we’re honoured to feature an audio interview with Lama Obeid , a Ramallah-based writer and reporter whose work focuses on culture, gastronomy, and food politics in the context of the ongoing Israeli occupation. This interview is a deep dive into themes from Lama’s work, which we covered in a short fea...

In January 2024, we sat down with hosts Jackie Turner and Matthew Kessler to record an episode for one of our favourite food podcasts, Feed by Table Debates. We’ve been fans of Feed since its inception — in the early days of FFJ, they were running a season on power in the food system — and to be hosted on our own episode was truly a dream come true. The episode was just released two weeks ago, and...

Can we square our love of animals with our inability to stop eating their body parts? In this short audio essay, Feminist Food Journal editor Isabela chronicles her evolving relationship with vegetarianism and stubborn love of offal to unpack what meat means to our sense of self. This podcast features writing and sound editing by Isabela Bonnevera and original music by the Electric Muffin Research...

This is an audio reading of Meat: The Four Futures , first published last week by TABLE researcher Tamsin Blaxter as part of our MEAT issue. Tamsin breaks down the gendered dimensions of different future visions on meat, weaving together strands of feminist and postcolonial history to examine why certain futures resonate differently with different folks, and what direction techno-meat is heading i...

Through a conversation with his father, Amirio Freeman digs into the dynamics of grilling as a queer Black man. Drawing on references to literature investigating meat’s link to masculinity, the piece offers an intimate dialogue between family members about how the act of bringing meat to a flame reflects Black food traditions in need of stewards, impositions of gender performance, and food as a ve...

This is an audio version of the piece “To Speak in Two Tongues”, written (and narrated here) by Mwinji Nakamba Siame for our MEAT issue . Mwinji Nakamba Siame is a writer and budding visual artist with an interest in sharing and understanding African women’s experiences. Her nonfiction has most recently appeared in Art Dusseldorf where she wrote about the Women’s History Museum of Zambia. Her fict...

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...

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 lin...

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 explore...

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...

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 &...

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 ri...

In an interesting twist, this is an in-house interview with FFJ’s founding editors. Isabela talks to Zoë about her master's thesis research on bunabéts, otherwise known as coffee houses, in Ethiopia and the links between serving coffee feminization and the sexualization of feminized labour. Zoë's research went on to be published in the Journal of Gender and Research. You can read it here . This p...

This is an audio reading of Just Because I Bottom, Doesn’t Mean I’ll Make You a Sandwich , narrated by Pericles Santis and written by Jay Gee for our SEX issue. Read the original article here . Further reading Atwood, S. F. (2019). The Determination of Gender Roles and Power Dynamics Within Female Same Sex Couples. University of Northern Iowa. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

Paris, 1942. A group of women storm a grocery store on the Rue de Buci to seize the sardines on sale that day and distribute them to a hungry crowd. A scuffle ensues, shots ring out — and at the end, two policemen are dead. Today, the Rue de Buci event is remembered as an act of women’s resistance during wartime. But is that all there is to it? In this episode of Feminist Food Stories, founding ed...

Is there social, political, economic, and cultural war being waged on fat bodies? Scholars have argued that fat stigma is contributing to the social and physiological harm of fat people and that this stigma is in fact a central driver of morbidity and mortality at a population level. For FFJ’s second issue, WAR, our editor Zoë brings you another episode of Feminist Food Stories featuring her conve...

Passover is upon us, and what better time to reflect on a Jewish mother's love for her children? Our MILK highlight of the week is editor Isabela's audio story, A Treasure for My Daughter, where she explores growth and sacrifice through the lens of her mom's non-kosher kitchen (and fluffy matzo balls). Dig in, eat on, and celebrate the eternal complexity that is food and family. This podcast featu...

This is the audio version of ‘The Childless Mothers’ , a piece written by Lauren Gitlin for our MILK issue and read here by the author herself. Lauren is a former food scholar, journalist, and wine professional who currently owns and operates Villa Villekulla Farm , a goat microdairy in Barnard, Vermont. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access t...

Milk is a highly contested beverage, but not always for the reasons you might think. In this episode of Feminist Food Stories (and as part of our MILK issue), editor Isabela looks at how milk is used as a tool of racial and gender oppression by both extremist alt-right forces and discreet government policies. For part of this story, she sits down with Alice Yao, an associate professor with the Dep...