CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS (ITHACA, NEW YORK) -- Gitanjali Shahani is professor of English at San Francisco State University, where she teaches courses on Shakespeare studies, postcolonial studies, and food studies. She wrote this essay for the Cornell University Press blog.
“As with the early modern diatribes, the modern ones have done little to discourage coffee culture or the immersion in a global imaginary that it entails,” Shahani wrote. “It turns out, not even COVID has been able to deter this. Recent surveys suggest that people have been drinking more coffee during the pandemic, brewing at home and ordering online. But the coffeehouse has morphed from an arena of vibrant political debate and affable banter to a sadder, lonelier pickup window. For now, our public spheres are approximated in small, dystopian Zoom windows, where large coffee mugs continue to make a guest appearance. On International Coffee Day, we might mourn the loss of the ease with which we accessed the international itself, at a time when the closest we will get to the Kona reserve or the Haitian mountains will be via branded coffee.”