Remembering, Eating, Cooking, and Sharing : Identity Constructing Activities in Ethnic American First-Person Food Writings

Abstract

During the past couple of decades, the topic of food and identity has become the subject of increased academic inquiry and scholarly pursuit. However, despite this increased attention, it is still more common to find interpretations of the food that appears in fictional writings than to find critical examinations of creative nonfiction works whose entire thematic focus is food. First-person food writings, like other forms of literature, are not only aesthetically pleasing, they have the power to evoke emotional and psychological responses in their readers. More specifically, ethnic American food memoirs and essays explore important twenty-first century questions concerning identity and the navigation of hybridity. This thesis considers some of these questions through an investigation of three specific food-related acts in five separate literary works: Remembering in "Cojimar, 1958," from Eduardo Machado's book, Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home, and "Kimchi Blues," by Grace M. Cho; eating in "Candy and Lebeneh," part of Diana Abu-Jaber's The Language of Baklava, and "Eating the Hyphen" by Lily Wong; and cooking in Shoba Narayan's "A Feast to Decide a Future" and "Honeymoon in America," part of her food memoir, Monsoon Diary.