"I want to see a power shift." - Q&A with Alicia Kennedy
Stories of food, and how food is portrayed in media, is a question of culture, privilege, and power. In the current climate, we are tackling some much needed questions about representation and not just which stories are told, but who gets to tell them.
As Navneet Alang wrote in Eater recently, “Who gets to use the global pantry or introduce “new” international ingredients to a Western audience? And behind that is an even more uncomfortable query: Can the aspiration that has become central to the culinary arts ever not be white? Because the aesthetics of food media are indeed white. That white aesthetic is not, strictly speaking, the abundant natural light, ceramic plates, strategically scattered handfuls of fresh herbs, pastel dining rooms, artisan knives, or even the butcher diagram tattoos that the food media so loves to fetishize. It is more accurate to say that the way we define what is contemporary and fashionable in food is tied to whiteness as a cultural norm — and to its ability to incorporate other cultures without actually becoming them.”
The predominately white world of food media is ripe for change, and in the past couple of months, as journalists, chefs, and activists paint a picture of what the culture of some of the biggest food media institutions looks like, we as eaters and readers are challenged to tackle difficult and nuanced questions about how we view what we eat.
Food is political. As such, taking a critical eye isn’t just taking a critical eye to what’s on our plates—it’s a critical eye to culture as a whole. There has been a lot to analyze, critique, question, and think about in the food world over the last few months, and there are many layers to it. It takes digging deep to understand them. One of the writers that I think has done an excellent job of doing that digging and shedding a critical light on these questions of power, privilege, and culture in food is Alicia Kennedy.
I am a subscriber to her newsletter, and every week her insight causes me to think differently, to ask new questions, to listen to new voices. If you don’t follow her work already, I hope that you do. She kindly agreed to answer a few questions for Comestible, on food media, privilege, and capitalism.
When did you start writing about food? What are some of the roles/writing jobs you have had in that time?
I started writing about food in 2015. My first piece came out in January of that year, about chocolatier Lagusta Yearwood, for the Hairpin. When I started freelancing on food, I was working as a copy editor at New York Magazine, but about six months into it, left for a contract at Food & Wine, where I kept copyediting but also got some bylines. Then I went part-time at Edible Brooklyn/Manhattan as an editor from 2016 to 2018, and again for six months at the end of 2019. I have been a contributor at the Village Voice, a columnist at Nylon and How We Get to Next, and am currently a contributor to Tenderly, a vegan magazine published through Medium. My newsletter is my anchor gig, and I otherwise freelance for whoever will have me; this year, I've moved from writing for food magazines much to writing for political and general interest magazines about food.
How has your voice changed over the course of your career and how have you seen the world of food media change (or not change, as the case may be)?
My voice has grown into itself. Writing the column for How We Get to Next at the end of 2018 and start of 2019 really established me as more of a cultural critic grounded in food than a food writer, I think, and that has been a critical change. I'm much more comfortable when I can draw on a host of references and resources and philosophies and am not just like, "Here's a dish" or "here's a chef."
The obsession with representation in food media that started around 2016—with giving freelance or contributor gigs to Black people and people of color but not much real staff power, as well as covering more BIPOC in food—has been revealed as just a corporate strategy, especially as Bon Appétit has blown up. They thought they could get away with a really shallow understanding and presentation of diversity. Luckily, that's been blown up, but I don't foresee much change in corporate food media unless white writers and editors give up their jobs and they go to Black people and people of color. I'm not interested in working in corporate media; I'm happy to be DIY and freelance. But I want to see a power shift, because I think it will result in better work and I'm bored of being bored.
What was your relationship to food growing up, and how would you identify the food culture in which you were raised?
I've always been a big eater, and I've written before about my grandmother feeding me lobster and lamb chops when I was very young. We also watched Julia Child and The Frugal Gourmet on PBS, and I wasn't so much a picky eater as a kid as I was a snobby eater—I've never tasted white bread or American cheese, and my mom would have to send me to school with fried chicken and salad instead of sandwiches, or else I wouldn't eat. My favorite food was Chinese American, though, and I'd love dipping the wrappers of fried dumplings in that vinegary sauce and the crisp sauciness of sesame chicken—that's still my absolute number one go-to comfort food; sometimes I just feel like an absolute whiny baby who needs a bottle, but I just need Chinese takeout. I think this is a pretty common New Yorker thing.
That doesn't mean I didn't also eat crap like Ellios frozen pizza and Chips Ahoy, but for the most part, I was extremely spoiled—not with fancy food, with just good food. Though I ate some Puerto Rican things, like fried plantains and pastelillos (which gave me my persistent love for olives), my general food culture was just suburban, sea-side New York metro area.
Speaking of food culture, in the US we have expanded our pantry to include all kinds of ingredients from other places. But our embrace of them often only comes when white food media or food personalities use them, and in turn, the context of those ingredients and dishes is easily erased. Given all of this, I am wondering what your perspective on appropriation of food culture is?
There's no way, in a globalized, capitalist world, to enjoy food and close yourself off from bringing in elements of various cuisines into your own kitchen. But it's about knowing where things come from and how they're traditionally used, and knowing that when you use them non-traditionally, you're not necessarily doing something amazing—you're just cooking and hopefully appreciating them. When I marinate tempeh in smoked pimentón paprika from Spain and soy sauce to make something like bacon, I'm bringing together things from Indonesia, Spain, and China—there's no inherent meaning or anything inherently interesting about that. If you don't want your cooking and pantry to be influenced only by white people, seek out non-white voices in cookbooks and on social media. Corporate media platforms whiteness, but individuals have a choice about whose work they consume and look for.
For you, is cooking a political act? Is eating a political act?
Yes, especially because I live on a colonized island where most food is imported because of rules of the U.S. empire. I have to make extremely conscious choices to buy locally grown and produced food, and to ideally shop at locally owned stores and eat at locally owned restaurants and cafés. I'm never going to go to Starbucks in Old San Juan for my coffee (well, I have, but that was because the electricity was out and only they had a generator), but I do get some staples at Costco. I'm certainly not going to eat at a fast-food chain. It's a balance.
In the food media world we have been watching the public "peeling back of the curtain" of the toxic, racist workplace at Bon Appétit (and now others as well). What do you hope the future of food media looks like? I know that you wrote in a recent newsletter "Worker-owned media models are probably the only real future the industry has." Why is that?
I hope worker-owned everything is the future. Capitalism creates toxicity, and thrives on racism and misogyny. The only way to combat inequality is with the end of capitalism, which forces everyone into competition and ladder-climbing and cheap solutions.
I just subscribed to "Vittles" which I know you are an advocate of. Any other food media or food journalists that you are paying attention to right now that you want us to know about?
I also love James Hansen's In Digestion newsletter, which is also out of London. Whetstone Magazine, Klancy Miller's forthcoming For the Culture, and the incredible work of Victoria Bouloubasis of covering how the pandemic has affected the mainly Latinx workforce at North Carolina's meat-processing plants. I'd say subscribe to my newsletter for more, because I'm always linking to work that I enjoy and interviewing folks who are really stretching the bounds of food media.
What have you been making in the past few weeks that you are excited about?
You've caught me at a time when I haven't been cooking much, owing to a bout of sickness followed by a glut of work. But I love my lime-cilantro cashew cream, which is just a cup of soaked cashews blended with the juice of half a lime, a handful of cilantro, a clove of garlic, and a pinch of salt. It works on tacos, on nachos, and as a salad dressing. It's super simple and super versatile.
Thank you Alicia!
You can subscribe to Alicia’s newsletter and follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
Papercut illustration by Anna Brones
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