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The Chewing Gum of the Americas, From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley
University of Arizona Press
June 2009
On Sale: June 15, 2009
142 pages
ISBN: 0816528217
EAN: 9780816528219
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
Although Juicy Fruitยฎ gum was introduced to North Americans in 1893, Native Americans in Mesoamerica were chewing gum thousands of years earlier. And although in the last decade โbiographiesโ have been devoted to salt, spices, chocolate, coffee, and other staples of modern life, until now there has never been a full history of chewing gum. Chicle is a history in four acts, all of them focused on the sticky white substance that seeps from the sapodilla tree when its bark is cut. First, Jennifer Mathews recounts the story of chicle and its earliest-known adherents, the Maya and Aztecs. Second, with the assistance of botanist Gillian Schultz, Mathews examines the sapodilla tree itself, an extraordinarily hardy plant that is native only to Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. Third, Mathews presents the fascinating story of the chicle and chewing gum industry over the last hundred plus years, a tale (like so many twentieth-century tales) of greed, growth, and collapse. In closing, Mathews considers the plight of the chicleros, the โextractorsโ who often work by themselves tapping trees deep in the forests, and how they have emerged as icons of local pop cultureโportrayed as fearless, hard-drinking brawlers, people to be respected as well as feared. Before Dentyneยฎ and Chicletsยฎ, before bubble gum comic strips and the Doublemintยฎ twins, there was gum, oozing from jungle trees like melting candle wax under the slash of a machete. Chicle tells us everything that happened next. It is a spellbinding story.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Sunday - July 12, 2009
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