America Eats: A government sponsored project to document American Eating Traditions

From 1935 to 1943, the US government created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as way to provide employment to millions of Americans during the Great Depression. One division of this program was the Federal Writers Project a government run agency that created projects to unemployed writers and editors. The greatest body of work that came out of the Federal Writers Project was a series of travel guide books on the United States, entitled the American Guide Series. Once this theme was exhausted, the administrators of the FWP came up with the idea for a book about the eating traditions of the United States. According to a memo sent to the regional editors of the FWP, the book was to focus on:

“American cookery and the part it has played in the national life, as exemplified in the group meals that preserve not only traditional dishes but also traditional attitudes and customs. Emphasis should be divided between food and people…In describing group meals tell how they are organized, who supplies and cooks the food, what the traditional dishes are, what local opinion is on heretical variations in the recipe, and what the group mores are in connection with the meal.”[1]

The “America Eats” project, initiated in 1939, was organized into five regions (Northeast, South, Middle West, Far West, and Southwest) and each office sent out writers to collect stories. Many of the writers who participated in the project were unknowns but among the essays, recipes, poems, stories and interviews collected there were offerings from famed American authors Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston. Stories described culinary traditions from across the country including such oddities as Coca-Cola parties in Georgia, squirrel Mulligan in Arkansas, Nebraska lamb fries, Lousianan tête de veau, Indiana persimmon pudding, Rhode Island jonny cakes, and western Depression cake.

The project provided a vast and unique insight on eating traditions before industrialized food began to really nationalize the American diet. However, the America Eats project was never fully finished or published. From 1939 through 1942, articles were sent into Washinton D.C. from the regional offices across the country but before publication could be finalized, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and government spending quickly shifted to the military efforts of World War II. The documents from the project were stored in the Library of Congress and remained largely forgotten about until author Mark Kurlansky rediscovered them and subsequently published an edited collection of the stories from the project in 2009.

America Eats, as a historical source, provides a fascinating time capsule into the food traditions of 1930s and ‘40s United States. In a time before food writing was a literary or journalistic genre, it offered a new perspective on capturing American traditions.

Bibliography:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203658504574193983503107474.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/books/review/Miles-t.html

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-05-11-kurlansky-interview_N...

Kurlansky, Mark. The Food of a Younger Land. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009.

[1]Quoted in, The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009) 14-15.