Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fiction by Catherine Keyser

Abstract

Reviewed by: Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fiction by Catherine Keyser Katharina Vester (bio) Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fiction By Catherine Keyser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. vii + 219. In Artificial Color, Catherine Keyser makes visible how race is constructed in American literature in the first half of the twentieth century through references to and depictions of food. Keyser's reading of well- and lesser-known—as well as unpublished—texts is precise, engaging, and ultimately very satisfying. In her introduction, Keyser claims that modern food practices made their way into texts by writers of the Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, and the authors of the 1930s and 1940s to describe, negotiate, and challenge the formation of race. Reading these food references critically offers not only new insights into the texts but also into the production of race within the early twentieth century. Keyser rereads texts such as Jean Toomer's Cane, George Schuyler's science fiction, Ernest Hemingway's early novels, Gertrude Stein's Geography and Plays, writings by the Fitzgeralds, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Dorothy West's The Living Is Easy against the foil of contemporary nonfiction (such as instructional literature) and visual texts to tease out how and in what ways they refer to the food technologies and knowledge of their time. These readings render nuanced reflections on the arbitrariness as well as the intentionality of racial politics. Keyser's readings demonstrate, for instance, how carefully constructed and legitimized white privilege is in literature, and how fragile and illogical it is at the same time. Keyser positions the book within "critical eating studies" and is intellectually indebted not only to the work of Kyla Wazana Tompkins but also Sara Ahmed and Mel Y. Chen. The introduction gives Keyser's fabulous close readings a solid but almost too narrow theoretical frame. However, don't skip the introduction, since it includes hidden gems such as Keyser's definition of [End Page 299] modern food as distinguished by "new technologies, global geographies, and dietary regimens" (p. 3). The changes brought about through innovations in production, storage, and transportation, the geopolitical implications of consumer interests in tropical fruits or the increased cultural capital of culinary connoisseurship of food deemed exotic, as well as new, "scientific" dietary regimes often negotiated understandings of race. These Keyser is interested to bring to light. In the following chapters, Keyser's close readings go far beyond what the introduction promises. While the readings do explore the representations of modern food practices such as the carbonization of drinks, they also look at traditional foodways such as cane boils and mushroom hunting, thus quite powerfully demonstrating how twentieth-century imaginings of race layer themselves seamlessly over older conceptualizations, simultaneously veiling and emphasizing racial anxieties. Equally nuanced is Keyser's analysis of race, which appears throughout the book in different configurations: the challenging of anti-Black sentiments, the negotiations of mixed-racedness, the racialization of class difference, the envy of nativeness (as a fantasy of authentic belonging), and the porousness and fragility of whiteness, to name only a few. Keyser's readings of racialized layers in her interesting selection of texts are multifaceted and in perpetual motion, which lets the literary passages Keyser touches sparkle with new luster. Three assets make this book a delightful read: First, Keyser's claim that critical readings of food expose the construction of race in literature is well executed in the chapters. For instance, Keyser traces the imagery of carbonized drinks and artificial food coloring to explore the intricacies of race in Jean Toomer's work. Researching controversies about food coloring in the 1920s, Keyser shows how bottlers narratively naturalized additives in sodas to intentionally erase their artificiality and make them seem organic and unavoidable. According to Keyser, Toomer's use of food coloring in his work thus becomes a powerful tool to point to the artificiality of racial constructions and make them visible again. Second, Keyser's archival research alone makes this book an important contribution to the field. Her skillful reading of ads, industry pamphlets, and dietary advice adds dimension to many of her close readings. This becomes perhaps most apparent...