Culinary fictions
Subtitle: food in South Asian diasporic culture
By: Anita Mannur.
Publisher: Temple University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
ISBN-13: 9781439900772; 9781439900789
Subjects: Food in literature; Food habits in literature; South Asians in literature; Cookery, Indic; English literature -- South Asian authors -- History and criticism; English literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism
Description: For South Asians, food regularly plays a role in how issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and national identity are imagined. This book provides food for thought as it considers the metaphors literature, film, and TV shows use to describe Indians abroad. When an immigrant mother in Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake", combines Rice Krispies, Planters peanuts, onions, salt, lemon juice, and green chili peppers to create a dish similar to one found on Calcutta sidewalks, it not only evokes the character's Americanization, but also her nostalgia for India. Food, Anita Mannur writes, is a central part of the cultural imagination of diasporic populations. Mannur examines the cultural production from the Anglo-American reaches of the South Asian diaspora. Using texts from novels - Chitra Divakaruni's "Mistress of Spices", and Shani Mootoo's "Cereus Blooms at Night" - to cookbooks such as Madhur Jaffrey's "Invitation to Indian Cooking" and Padma Lakshmi's "Easy Exotic", she illustrates how national identities are consolidated in culinary terms.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Nostalgia, domesticity and gender; title: Culinary nostalgia: authenticity, nationalism and diaspora; title: Feeding desire: food, domesticity and challenges to hetero-; title: Patriarchy; title: Palatable multiculturalisms and class critique; title: Sugar and spice: sweetening the taste of alterity; title: Visualizing class critique and female labor; title: Theorizing fusion in America; title: Eating America: culture, race and food in the social imaginary of the; title: Second generation; title: Easy exoticism: culinary performances of indianness; title: Conclusion: room for more: multiculturalism's culinary legacies.