He Black Hunger

The Black Hunger

A spine-tingling, queer gothic horror debut where two men are drawn into an otherworldly spiral. “A gothic masterpiece. A devastating exploration of humanity's capacity for evil."​ – Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters "A phenomenal book full of rich historical detail, occult mysticism, and slow, creeping horror. A triumph that should be on your reading list." – Thomas D. Lee, author of Perilous Times John Sackville will soon be dead. Shadows writhe in the corners of his cell as he mourns the death of his secret lover and as the gnawing hunger inside him grows impossible to ignore. He must write his last testament before it is too late. The story he tells will take us to the darkest part of the human soul. It is a tale of otherworldly creatures, ancient cults, and a terrifying journey from the stone circles of Scotland to the icy peaks of Tibet. It is a tale that will take us to the end of the world. "The Black Hunger reveals its horrors inch by devastating inch." – Molly O'Neill, author of Greenteeth "A terrifying gothic journey to the place where the very cruelest, hungriest creatures hide in the snow, and wear our faces. This is a magisterial debut." – Michael Rowe, author of Wild Fell "Rich in historical detail, poignant romance, sweeping adventure, and visceral terror." – Jennifer Thorne, author of Diavola

Black Hunger

The creation of the Aunt Jemima trademark from an 1889 vaudeville performance of a play called "The Emigrant" helped codify a pervasive connection between African American women and food. In Black Hunger, Doris Witt demonstrates how this connection has operated as a central structuring dynamic of twentieth-century U.S. psychic, cultural, sociopolitical, and economic life. Taking as her focus the tumultuous era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when soul food emerged as a pivotal emblem of white radical chic and black bourgeois authenticity, Witt explores how this interracial celebration of previously stigmatized foods such as chitterlings and watermelon was linked to the contemporaneous vilification of black women as slave mothers. By positioning African American women at the nexus of debates over domestic servants, black culinary history, and white female body politics, Black Hunger demonstrates why the ongoing narrative of white fascination with blackness demands increased attention to the internal dynamics of sexuality, gender, class, and religion in African American culture. Witt draws on recent work in social history and cultural studies to argue for food as an interpretive paradigm which can challenge the privileging of music in scholarship on African American culture, destabilize constrictive disciplinary boundaries in the academy, and enhance our understanding of how individual and collective identities are established.

Hunger's Rogues: on the Black Market in Europe, 1948