Violent Appetites

“Violent Appetites: Hunger in the Early Northeast could be oversimplified as a thoughtful case study of the axiom ‘you are what you eat.’ However, Cevasco simultaneously clarifies and complicates this notion with a nuanced analysis of hunger knowledge and highlights how marginalized people resisted the colonization of their cultural identities even after the eventual loss of much of their land and lifeways.”—Peggy Brunache, Hypotheses

“Violent Appetites is a visceral, existential study of precarity and scarcity and the extreme measures people and nations will take to fend off and survive both.”—Anthony Trujillo, H-Net Reviews

“What Cevasco does so well is to shake the traditional Christian and Euro-centric narrative which traces colonial power and dominance, through a critical reading of colonial accounts alongside consultation with modern Indigenous writers.”—Eleanor Barnett, Hypotheses

“In this bold and original study, Cevasco punctures the myth of colonial America as a land of plenty. This is a book about the past with lessons for our time of food insecurity.”—Peter C. Mancall, author of The Trials of Thomas Morton

“Unearthing compelling and harrowing episodes from the colonial past, Carla Cevasco puts hunger at the heart of the early American story. A revelatory and wholly original book.”—Andrew Lipman, Barnard College

“Replete with vividly revolting period descriptions of unusual foodways, this book tweaks readers’ own disgust reflexes, encouraging them to interrogate categories usually taken for granted.”—Jennifer L. Anderson, author of Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America