Woodard examines the sexual nature of documented instances of flesh-eating and details the various manners of consumption whereby Black Americans were metaphorically or actually eaten.

The book includes textual analyses of the works of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass as well as an examination of the treatment of Nat Turner, whose flesh was turned into "medicinal" grease.

[5] Woodard identifies practices such as the systemic starvation of enslaved people as parasitic relationships that use Black bodies to fuel the construction of Whiteness.

[1] Woodard draws on various critical methodologies and texts, including Works Progress Administration interviews, advertisements for runaways, and slave narratives.

[4] He writes that when Black Americans described instances of cannibalism, they "tried to understand why and how they had become so delectable, so erotically appetizing, to a nation and white populace that, at least rhetorically, denied and despised their humanity.

Woodard validates Black accounts, offering evidence of punishment rituals, including an instance of a slaveholder forcing enslaved people to eat the broiled ear of a member of their community.

[2] Turning his focus to Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Woodard argues for a "more fluid conception of gender and black consumption.

[5] The Delectable Negro reviews 20th-century representations of the Black male erotic interior, including the chain gang oral sex scene from Toni Morrison's novel Beloved.

At a 2006 American Studies Association conference, Woodard delivered the paper "Blood Magic and Sorcery in the State Formation Archive", laying out the key terminology he would use in The Delectable Negro.