Voices of Lefferts: Issue 8 (Flatbush Eats)

The Voices of Lefferts Community History Project is proud to present a special issue of our journal on the topic of food as part of an initiative titled “Flatbush Eats: Food, Survival, and Celebration.”  Inspired by the New Deal era Federal Writers' Project (FWP), Flatbush Eats aims to document the relationship between food and community in Flatbush-PLG. In the late 1930s, federal writers set out to collect stories and photos for a book to be titled "America Eats." Interrupted by the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into the war, the project was abandoned and the book was never published. However, what remains of the FWP archive of stories, recipes, cookbooks, and photographs tells us not only about food per se but also about a nation in transition, still reeling from the impact of the Great Depression—a period of American history often invoked these past two years of COVID-19 in relation to our own times. This second of two special issues on food features writing by writ