Crying over a Crisis?

In Verta Mae's essay "The Kitchen Crisis" she brings up several confusing examples about the natures of cooking and kitchens. She starts off citing an absurd and utterly impossible acount of a man with an instant lunch pill and inflatable couch. She happens to be using both of these for the same purpose. To highlight the absurdity of gadgets of the time and to pull readers in to the essay with what is supposed to qualify as humor. Both of these attempts are valid, but the second does not succeed at all. In fact, it simply pushes readers away with how weird it simply is. She then goes on to comment on the nature of kitchens.

She starts with a series of sentences highlighting race in the kitchen, white women apparently having no place as they are too frail, or pampered. She seems almost bitter as she talks about the contributions of blacks to the culinary arts. Primarily the essay turns into a random series of entries about how family and friends should defend the kitchen, and rapscallions will ruin them. Primarily, she concerns herself with vibes, or vibrations, apparently this pseudo real feeling of wellbeing that applies to how people treat kitchens. It also apparently has something to do with the quality of food, if one is loose, relaxed and living, then the food will be better. Each and every one of those claims, down to the last, is subjective and thus impossible to prove. None of these outside the historical aspect she brings to the table can be proven. Notably the evidence she brings from that angle is quite good and rather effective.

Unfortunately for Verta Mae, the essay is drowned in a sea of feelings and chaotic entries. She has no discernible plot outside apparently protecting your kitchen for the sake of purity. All in all, the dialect makes it a hard read, and the points are presented in far too fragmented a manner for it to be effective.