Book review of: Cecilia Gowdy-Wygant (2020) Cultivating Victory. The Women’s Land Army and the Victory Garden Movement

TY - JOUR

T1 - Book review of: Cecilia Gowdy-Wygant (2020) Cultivating Victory. The Women’s Land Army and the Victory Garden Movement

AU - van Mourik, Anne

PY - 2023/3/15

Y1 - 2023/3/15

N2 - Cultivating Victory’s overall argument is very convincing. The book’s aim to “complement yet complicate the existing narrative of nations, nature and gender in the twentieth century” (p. 11) is successfully met. As such, Gowdy-Wygant has delivered an important and engaging book which shows how women’s efforts in food campaigns affected gender roles and norms during both world wars. In articulating the lives of individual women within the WLA’s, she delivers an accessible narrative for understanding the origins and collaborations of these agricultural women’s organizations. As such, her book serves to restore women’s contributions to their own advancement to their rightful place in history.

AB - Cultivating Victory’s overall argument is very convincing. The book’s aim to “complement yet complicate the existing narrative of nations, nature and gender in the twentieth century” (p. 11) is successfully met. As such, Gowdy-Wygant has delivered an important and engaging book which shows how women’s efforts in food campaigns affected gender roles and norms during both world wars. In articulating the lives of individual women within the WLA’s, she delivers an accessible narrative for understanding the origins and collaborations of these agricultural women’s organizations. As such, her book serves to restore women’s contributions to their own advancement to their rightful place in history.

KW - Hunger

KW - WWI

KW - WWII

KW - Food

KW - War

U2 - 10.1080/20549547.2023.2191241

DO - 10.1080/20549547.2023.2191241

M3 - Book/Film/Article review

VL - 9

JO - Global Food History

JF - Global Food History

IS - 1

ER -