“Richly illustrated and supported with meticulous research, The Fruits of Empire demonstrates the essential need to understand the history and politics behind our food consumption. In the midst of a national reckoning with racism in the United States generally and in the arts specifically, we as art historians need to use our scholarly platforms to raise consciousness about the racist and nativist origins of our national visual culture. As Klein’s book deftly demonstrates in the context of the fruit industry, images matter. But, as she also argues, so do Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latinx lives.”
—Agricultural History
“The selection of works in The Fruits of Empire leaves little place for humor, irony, or disapproval. Part of the reason for Klein’s largely deterministic interpretation may well lie in the absence of any attempt at classifying visual images and the different values and aims that propel advertisement (sales), painting (aesthetics), and photography (record). Yet, if Klein does not capture the entire, complicated story of art and imperial expansion, she tells an important and often sorry part of it.”
—Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"The book’s strength…rests in its accessibility and relevance to readers well beyond the classroom. A captivating read, it offers clear insight into the growth of the fruit industry and the many ways in which its attendant images sowed the seeds for the rhetorical and physical violence against Asian, Black, Latinx, and women-identified people that continues to haunt the United States to this day."—Panorama: Journal of the Associations of Historians of American Art
"Klein’s creativity, clear prose, and thoughtful exploration of fruit and the iconography of empire have produced an excellent book."—Journal of American History
"This well-written, well-illustrated book perceptively analyzes visual depictions of fruit and fruit cultivation from the nineteenth century to our own time."—Diplomatic History
"A must-read! This is a refreshing and critical contribution to food studies scholarship, and I have yet to see another book that tackles the representational strategies of the food industry or food in mass culture as intelligently or brilliantly."—Marcia Chatelain, author of
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America "This is a pioneering study. Investigations into food and its cultural meanings are not new, but the marriage of food studies to visual studies, as deftly demonstrated by Shana Klein's nuanced and original book, is a breakthrough for the scholarship."—Katherine Manthorne, Professor of Art History, Graduate Center of the City University of New York
