What is Queer Food?

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a food writer and cook himself, John Birdsall often wondered whether there was such a thing as “queer food.” Was it rainbow cupcakes? Quiche? Unicorn frappucinos? In his new book, “What is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution” Birdsall examines the complex story of how, through times of fear and persecution, queer people used food to express joy and build community. Guests: John Birdsall, author "What is Queer Food?: How We Started a Revolution" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:46.5	From KQED.
0:48.7	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:02.8	Elegant and snappy, penetrating and tangy, John Birdsall's new book, What is Queer Food,
1:09.0	is a kind of personal history.
1:11.2	Not personal in the memoir sense,
1:12.9	but in the way that Birdsall traces
1:15.2	a particular genealogy of queer freedom
1:17.9	through cooking, friends, through a century.
1:21.0	Quote, a lonely junior high kid in a California suburb,
	...

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