Books

TELL ME HOW YOU EAT: FOOD, POWER AND THE WILL TO LIVE

If you are what you eat, what does that make you?

In a world where it feels as though the value of your life can be gauged by the goodness in your dinner, it is possible, even easy, to lose the will to live. This became particularly obvious to writer Amber Husain when suddenly, despite almost thirty years of practice, it seemed she had forgotten how to eat.

Medical wisdom tries fix the problem non-eater by teaching them the rules of Good Diet. But what if the problem is precisely the narrowing of life to questions of personal goodness? Suspecting there might be more to her stand-off with food than matters of identity and diet, Husain embarked on an enquiry into the special role of eating in our relationship with the world.

Combining a personal account of modern eating-disorder treatments, from the disturbing to the sublime, with a sprawling collective history of eating in hard times, Tell Me How You Eat unearths the astonishing effect of how we feed ourselves and others, not just on who we are, but on how we perceive our own political power. In doing so, it marks a bold and inspiring confrontation with our very understanding of food.

Published by (and available to order from) Hutchinson Heinemann/Atria Books.

Praise

‘A radical account of anorexia as alienation, Husain asks not what a person should eat but in what kind of world.’ Malcolm Harris

'A deeply researched and original exploration of the nature of our appetites. Tell Me How You Eat is refreshingly thoughtful on the question not just of what we eat, but the under-explored how. Connecting matters of desire with literature, cultural history and social change, Husain shows us that eating is a personal and a political act and – sometimes – even radical. Ruby Tandoh

'Hyperintelligent, omnivorous, and guided by a discerning ethical compass, Tell Me How You Eat shows that food is more than fuel, it is the way we ourselves are metabolized within systems that value or devalue life, justify or reject brutality. Husain's captivating treatise galvanizes as much as it illuminates – making you hunger for true nourishment, the kind that comes from a better world.' Alexandra Kleeman

'A deeply personal and political search for a reason to eat that takes readers on an enlightening and radicalising ride through historical and contemporary examples, from Eleanor Marx to the Black Panthers to the Right to Food Movement. A vital and compelling investigation of eating – and a profoundly original analysis of some people’s inability to do so.' Rebecca May Johnson

'A defiant and original inquiry, written with an intelligence as inviting as it is uncompromising. Husain's insistence that every person who eats (or doesn't) should be recognized as a complex and dignified individual is indeed revolutionary.' Charlotte Shane

'We don’t know how to eat anymore. Maybe we never knew, but now we certainly know that we don’t know. Must we rely on medications to save us, curbing our confusion about appetite or its absence? Amber Husain has other ideas, even an entirely other sensibility. One that puts us back in our body. We need this book.' Jamieson Webster

'Amber Husain's witty, unsparing voice wraps her story around those of historic and contemporary figures in surprising and rich ways. The book reframes the way we eat not just as an embrace or refusal of the world, but as a plea for a better one.' Alicia Kennedy

‘By turns mordant and heartbreaking, I found this enviably elegant book both stunningly profound and politically rousing. In it, Amber Husain offers us a way of thinking about eating that eschews individualism, moralism, and health all at once. Somehow she has done it again: written an unforgettable book that grasps the very root of things." Sophie Lewis

'Tell Me How You Eat rewrites all received narratives of disordered eating, evading the binary of pathology entirely. Beautiful, confronting, and invigorating.' Asa Seresin

MEAT LOVE: AN IDEOLOGY OF THE FLESH

They say it is love. We say, so what?

In an era of climate catastrophe and corporate agribusiness, meat has been decisively made over. Urbanites across the West are called upon to look at the animals we eat, and by looking, learn to treat them with love. We are asked to tenderise our carnal desire for flesh and dignify our relationship with the land. Yet can our appetite for meat be redeemed by this new way of seeing? Can an ‘ethical’ approach to the farming, sale, and consumption of meat really save both the planet and our souls?

Revisiting John Berger’s writings on animals and class, Meat Love restores a materialist lens to the politics of carnivorous desire. In this vital essay, Amber Husain deconstructs the beauty, tragedy, and mystery with which our images of meat are embellished, drawing on a range of visual sources from contemporary art and film to Instagram and advertising. Probing the nature of ‘love’ in contemporary human-animal relations, it casts a critical eye on the visual culture of meat as it gentrifies and mutates, informing, for better or for worse, who we become as political subjects.

Published by (and available to order from) Mack Books.

Praise

‘An exquisitely crafted little hand-grenade lobbed at the gentrification of the carnivorous mind. With breathtaking verve and elegance, Husain traces through phenomena such as #cottagecore influencers, King Charles III's views on harmony, Plato, Pythagoras, horror movies, and celebrity cooks. I am not exaggerating when I say I have thought about Meat Love every day since beginning it. As someone who cut their teeth politically in vegan climate justice circles, I didn’t think any of the arguments in it could possibly surprise me; I was wrong.’ Sophie Lewis

‘A bracing interrogation of the bourgeois romance with so-called ‘ethical’ meat. What does it mean, Husain asks, that our love of animals is not only compatible with, but culminates in, our consuming their flesh? Her answer disturbs and dazzles.’ Amia Srinivasan

REPLACE ME

An essay on work, desire, and fear of being replaced

From the workplace to our personal relationships, anxieties about being replaced have come to dominate the late-capitalist psyche. Tech and self-help industries have exploited these fears, selling gadgets and ideologies that offer a privatised vision of ‘progress’. How can we reclaim the desire for collective resistance? In this wide-ranging essay, critic Amber Husain asks if our obsession with replacement might in fact be at the heart of political stasis. Radical, clear-sighted, and moving, Replace Me is at once a repudiation of myths of replacement and a celebration of the political possibilities inherent in embracing our own replaceability.

Published by (and available to order from) Peninsula Press.

Praise

‘A close cousin to Franco Berardi, Amber Husain conducts one of the most sweeping assessments to date of neoliberalism’s psychic toll. Beginning with the sad fact of expendability in entry-level work, she expands on Lauren Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism, diving deep into under-investigated histories to understand the roots of systemic unhappiness and the nature of desire itself.’ Chris Kraus

‘Replace Me is a short, searing meditation on the idea of human replaceability in politics and work, love and comradeship, which ranges from Karel Čapek to Maggie Nelson, from Aleksandra Kollontai to Lauren Berlant. It packs an extraordinary range of ideas and inspirations into its brief polemic, managing to be sensitive and yet utterly provocative.’ Juliet Jacques

‘How rare it is to read a book like Amber Husain’s Replace Me, a work of criticism that lays bare the horrors of our automated lives with such subtle and sustained beauty. Replace Me is at once wonderfully unsparing in its critique of capitalism’s myths and wonderfully humane in its affirmative vision of love’s political vitality.’ Merve Emre

‘Essential reading for anyone in search of different futures. Amber Husain’s pellucid, erudite prose captures the many ways in which the workplace has been changing, further eviscerating any sense of engagement in meaningful labour. With verve and originality, Replace Me tracks through time highlighting social discontents before finally suggesting creative modes of coming to terms with, and hence resisting, the chief dysfunctions of the present.’ Lynne Segal

You can read an extract of the book in Granta as well as tie-in articles in Tribune and Prospect.

Replace Me was selected as a book of the year for 2021 by Verso authors and Turnaround staff, among others.