Overview

Bustle's Most Anticipated An intimate and expansive exploration of how and why we eat, and the relationship between food and empowerment, through the historic feasts and fasts of radicals and tyrants. Inspired by writer Amber Husain's unorthodox route to healing from anorexia, Tell Me How You Eat examines not just how society views the refusal to eat, but how we understand the meaning and power of food. Suspecting that the standard courses of treatment--as disempowering as they are ineffective--might in fact be part of the underlying problem, Husain took part in an experimental psylocibin treatment study. Where the medical model typically tries to fix the difficult non-eater, this trial opened her mind to the idea that there might be more to fix beyond the self--that our relationship with food might be closely entwined with our outlook on the world. Through five chapters taking in hunger, restriction, gorging, feeding, and the making of political demands, Husain turns away from thinking about how people are shaped by food to think instead about how food can inspire people to reshape the world. Each chapter searches for reasons to eat and live through histories ranging from pus-drinking medieval nuns to Black Panther breakfast programs; from 1950s lesbian dinner parties to modern-day Gazan food bloggers. In a culture that insists ""you are what you eat,"" and makes every bite a fraught moral choice, Husain argues that we will only feel truly nourished when we can eat in the spirit of restoring a collective right to food, long eroded over centuries of systems and narratives that have normalized deprivation.

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9781668060315

Table of Contents

Reviews

""From Black Panther breakfasts to medieval witch-hunts, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment to the World Central Kitchen, anorexia to gestation, Elvis Presley to veganism, and Nigella Lawson to Diane di Prima, Tell Me How You Eat charts an irresistible path through Western culture in order to land its rallying cry for food's 'power to create new worlds.' By turns mordant and heartbreaking, I found this enviably elegant book both stunningly profound and politically rousing. In it, Amber Husain offers us a way of thinking about eating that eschews individualism, moralism, and health all at once. Somehow she has done it again: written an unforgettable book that grasps the very root of things."" --Sophie Lewis, author of Enemy Feminisms ""In Tell Me How You Eat, Amber Husain's witty, unsparing voice wraps her story around those of historic and contemporary figures in surprising and rich ways. The book reframes the way we eat not just as an embrace or refusal of the world, but as a plea for a better one."" --Alicia Kennedy, author of No Meat Required ""Hyperintelligent, omnivorous, and guided by a discerning ethical compass, Tell Me How You Eat shows that food is more than fuel, it is the way we ourselves are metabolized within systems that value or devalue life, justify or reject brutality. Husain's captivating treatise galvanizes as much as it illuminates--making you hunger for true nourishment, the kind that comes from a better world."" --Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun ""A deeply-researched and original exploration of the nature of our appetites. Tell Me How You Eat is refreshingingly thoughtful on the question not just of what we eat, but the under-explored how. Connecting matters of desire with literature, cultural history and social change, Husain reminds us that eating is a not just a personal act but also a political one and--sometimes--even radical."" --Ruby Tandoh, author of Eat Up ""A lively, radical account of anorexia as alienation, Husain asks not what a person should eat but in what kind of world."" --Malcolm Harris, nationally bestselling author of Palo Alto ""In Tell Me How You Eat, Amber Husain's witty, unsparing voice wraps her story around those of historic and contemporary figures in surprising and rich ways. The book reframes the way we eat not just as an embrace or refusal of the world, but as a plea for a better one."" --Alicia Kennedy, author of No Meat Required

""A defiant and original inquiry, written with an intelligence as inviting as it is uncompromising. Husain's insistence that every person who eats (or doesn't) should be recognized as a complex and dignified individual is indeed revolutionary."" --Charlotte Shane, author of An Honest Woman ""A deeply personal and political search for a reason to eat that takes readers on an enlightening and radicalising ride through historical and contemporary examples, from Eleanor Marx to the Black Panthers to the Right to Food Movement. A vital and compelling investigation of eating--and a profoundly original analysis of some people's inability to do so."" --Rebecca May, author of Small Fires ""From Black Panther breakfasts to medieval witch-hunts, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment to the World Central Kitchen, anorexia to gestation, Elvis Presley to veganism, and Nigella Lawson to Diane di Prima, Tell Me How You Eat charts an irresistible path through Western culture in order to land its rallying cry for food's 'power to create new worlds.' By turns mordant and heartbreaking, I found this enviably elegant book both stunningly profound and politically rousing. In it, Amber Husain offers us a way of thinking about eating that eschews individualism, moralism, and health all at once. Somehow she has done it again: written an unforgettable book that grasps the very root of things."" --Sophie Lewis, author of Enemy Feminisms ""In Tell Me How You Eat, Amber Husain's witty, unsparing voice wraps her story around those of historic and contemporary figures in surprising and rich ways. The book reframes the way we eat not just as an embrace or refusal of the world, but as a plea for a better one."" --Alicia Kennedy, author of No Meat Required ""Hyperintelligent, omnivorous, and guided by a discerning ethical compass, Tell Me How You Eat shows that food is more than fuel, it is the way we ourselves are metabolized within systems that value or devalue life, justify or reject brutality. Husain's captivating treatise galvanizes as much as it illuminates--making you hunger for true nourishment, the kind that comes from a better world."" --Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun ""We don't know how to eat anymore. Maybe we never knew, but now we certainly know that we don't know. Must we rely on medications to save us, curbing our confusion about appetite or its absence? Amber Husain has other ideas, even an entirely other sensibility. One that puts us back in our body. We need this book."" --Jamieson Webster, author of On Breathing ""A deeply-researched and original exploration of the nature of our appetites. Tell Me How You Eat is refreshingingly thoughtful on the question not just of what we eat, but the under-explored how. Connecting matters of desire with literature, cultural history and social change, Husain reminds us that eating is a not just a personal act but also a political one and--sometimes--even radical."" --Ruby Tandoh, author of Eat Up ""A lively, radical account of anorexia as alienation, Husain asks not what a person should eat but in what kind of world."" --Malcolm Harris, nationally bestselling author of Palo Alto

Author Information

Amber Husain is a writer based in South London, UK. She is the author of Tell Me How You Eat, Meat Love, and Replace Me. Her essays on politics, literature, and art have been published in Granta, The New York Times, Baffler, and more. She has a PhD from UCL in the history of art and mind-body medicine in late-20th-century Britain. She teaches history of art, creative writing, and criticism. Visit AmberHusain.com for more information.

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