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All Stirred Up: Suf­frage Cook­books Food and the Bat­tle for Wom­en’s Right to Vote In hon­or of the cen­te­nary of the 19th amend­ment, a delec­table new book that reveals a new side to the his­to­ry of the suf­frage move­ment. We all like­ly con­jure up a sim­i­lar image of the women’s suf­frage move­ment: pick­et signs, red car­na­tions, mil­i­tant march­es through the streets. But was it only these ral­lies that gained women the expo­sure and pow­er that led them to the vote? Ever-coura­geous and cre­ative suf­frag­ists also car­ried their rad­i­cal mes­sage into America’s homes wrapped in food wis­dom through cook­books, which ingen­u­ous­ly pack­aged polit­i­cal strat­e­gy into already exis­tent social com­mu­ni­ties. These cook­books gave suf­frag­ists a chance to reach out to women on their own terms in non­threat­en­ing and acces­si­ble ways. Cook­ing togeth­er, feed­ing peo­ple, and using social sit­u­a­tions to put peo­ple at ease were pio­neer­ing grass­roots tac­tics that lever­aged the domes­tic knowl­edge these women already had, feed­ing spoon­fuls of suf­frage to com­mu­ni­ties through unex­pect­ed and unas­sum­ing chan­nels. Filled with charm and wit and actu­al his­toric recipes (“mix the crust with tact and vel­vet gloves using no sar­casm espe­cial­ly with the upper crust”) that evoke the spir­it­ed fla­vor of fem­i­nism and food move­ments, All Stirred Up reac­ti­vates the taste of an era and car­ries us back through time to when women enfran­chised them­selves through the sub­ver­sive and savvy pow­er of the palate.

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