This book draws out a number of unexpected connections between chocolate and blackness as both idea and reality. Silke Hackenesch builds her argument around four main focal points. First is the modes of production of chocolate—the economic realities of the business and the material connection between blackness and chocolate. Second is the semantics of chocolate, while its iconography is analyzed third. Finally, she addresses the use of chocolate as a racial signifier, showing that it is deployed differently by African Americans and Afro-Germans, for example.

Silke Hackenesch is assistant professor in the Department of British and North American History at University of Kassel, Germany.