Abstract
The paper reflects the representation of ethnic identity by immigrants of Asian American descent. Along with the analysis of globalization and ethnic identity in literature, understanding food culture through the works of Asian American authors is outlined. The paper investigates the works of writers whose stories are dedicated to the depiction of immigrants’ ways of searching identity and assimilating in new places. Novels and short stories written by John Okada, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Maxine Hong Kingston’s Frank Chin, and Mei Ng are being analyzed. In these literary works, writers raise questions of cultural politics, ethnic identity and experience, food culture and identity, history, immigration, and others. The paper aims at investigating the major issues highlighted in the works of Asian American authors and attempts to give insight into the most crucial problems faced by immigrants. The diversity of themes discussed makes it possible to perform a thorough analysis of the key problems of the study.
Introduction
There are many ways of understanding ethnic identity that help people view other cultures and realize the peculiarities of their traditions and customs. The most common methods of finding out about ethnic groups are race, history, and culture. However, there is one more issue that is considered of high importance when it comes to learning about identity. This issue is the treatment of food concepts in different nations. People of Asian American descent constitute a considerable part of the US population. They are typically distinguished from Americans by the color of skin and language. Frequently, Americans are well aware of Asian Americans’ food preferences and even may like some traditional Asian dishes. However, little is known about how food perception helps Asian Americans to construct their identity in the US. Meanwhile, foodways play a significant role in the formation and reflection of ethnic identity. Many scholarly investigations are focused on the analysis of the impact of food choices on Asian Americans’ assimilation into a new country. While many of these analyses are based on observations, there is another productive way of learning about Asian Americans’ food patterns: through authentic literary works by Asian American writers.
The paper gives an account of the process of globalization and its impact on ethnic minorities’ acceptance or rejection in the US. The spheres of people’s lives that are influenced by the process of globalization are analyzed. The understanding of food culture through Asian American literature is outlined in general. Further, the paper explores approaches to reflecting ethnic identity in works of such famous Asian American writers as John Okada, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, and Mei Ng. In their novels and short stories, these and other authors focus on the problems associated with the ethnic identity of people belonging to Asian American descent. Such crucial issues as gender and racial inequality, family relationships, the difficulty of self-acceptance, sexuality, and the acceptance of others are raised in the works of Asian American writers.
While each of them is unique in his or her depiction of these problems, all of the authors whose works are analyzed discuss food patterns as a significant constituent of any person’s formation as an individual. The concept of food helps to explain the difficulties in parent-child relationships and the approaches to resolving them in Ng’s Eating Chinese Food Naked, Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Okada’s No-No Boy. Femininity and masculinity constitute central problems in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Chin’s Donald Duk. Okada’s and Chin’s novels portray the issues of self-loathing and explain how the food concept may be employed to manage these problems. Stories by Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri also analyze some of the most essential questions about identity and food culture. The paper is an attempt to investigate the peculiarities of Asian American writers’ understanding of ethnic identity through foodways as well as a presentation and analysis of many crucial questions raised in these authors’ works.
Globalization, Food, and Ethnic Identity
The process of globalization concerns many spheres of people’s activity, and the attempt to understand ethnic identity in the course of globalization is not an uncommon practice. In various parts of the world, people strive to embrace the ideas of humanity and democracy (Wang and Guo 2). However, it is not always easy to avoid the disparities existing between the developed and developing countries that appear due to the technological progress in the former and the lack of such progress in the latter. Globalization may be considered as a philosophical issue since it has a great impact on the formation of the cultural identity of various nations irrespective of whether the process of formation takes place in people’s native country or a foreign one (Wang and Guo 2). Cassarino notes that food is present everywhere, allowing people to employ it in a variety of ways such as “talking it, writing it, reading it, thinking it, disputing it, and of course, eating it” (1). The researcher argues that the question of nourishment is now mentioned in all directions of popular culture (Cassarino 1). Literature is not an exception, suggesting a diversity of works where authors discuss how food impacts individuals and whole nations.
The language of food is present in the works of many ethnic kinds of the literature of the United States (Gardaphé and Xu 5). With the help of food metaphors, tropes, and images, authors portray family and community celebrations, show identity crises, create “usable histories” to build ancestral links, destroy ideologies, and evaluate global capitalism (Gardaphé and Xu 5). In the US, the impact of connections between food and ethnicity is diverse, including cultural, historical, psychological, social, and economic spheres. According to Gardaphé and Xu, the formation of ethnic identity is influenced by experiences of “food productions and services, culinary creativities, appetites, desires, hunger, and even vomit” (5). Since the process of inculcating “ethnic inferiority” frequently affects the digestive desires of ethnic people, culinary themes serve as vehicles for restoring ethnic pride and dignity (Gardaphé and Xu 6).
There are several approaches to investigating identity. Typically, such aspects as race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, religion, and personality are taken into consideration. The most common way of exploring identity is through the race (J. Kim 139). However, the issue of ethnic identity is not related to race very closely. Ethnic identity involves the traditions, customs, and culture of groups of people. Many Asian Americans connect ethnic identity with their native country and build their expectations on different features of their cultural heritage (J. Kim 139). As Oyserman and Sakamoto remark, Asian American culture belongs to the most widely represented ones in the US (435).
In their attempt to investigate the interplay between Asian American ethnic identity, orientations, and stereotypes, researchers outline four constituents of such identity: the feeling of linkage with one’s family, the sense of relation to traditions and heritage, the idea that one’s achievements will bring positive outcomes for their family and ethnic group, and the realization of racism and structural obstacles (Oyserman and Sakamoto 435). The first two components are closely related to the concept of food with the help of which people frequently reflect their devotedness to traditions and family. Whitt remarks that food has become a popular image in literature, which gives this concept of power to represent complex ideas and carry multiple meanings (2). As the researcher remarks, food’s “juices are dripping” into so many life spheres that it is practically impossible not to notice it (Whitt 2). Food research has grown out of the “literal context” of producing and consuming and has extended to various dimensions of cultural life, crossing lines between sociology, anthropology, and humanities (Whitt 2).
Understanding Food Culture Through Asian American Literature
Eating is one of the most “biologically deterministic” and socially resilient human acts (Wong, “Big Eaters” 18). Dietary images share many universal connotations because food is essential for people’s survival. Thus, investigators of semiotics have outlined some general frameworks for reading these meanings (Wong, “Big Eaters” 18). However, there is also another opinion concerning research in the sphere of food images. Despite biological generality, eating practices are defined to a great extent by people’s culture and, as a result, these practices can operate as elaborate instruments for encoding and conveying social relationships (Wong, “Big Eaters” 18). Concepts of eating and food in Asian American literature demonstrate how the issues of culture and appropriation impact relationships between people (Wong, “Big Eaters” 19). In her investigation of the description of love to food by Asian American authors, Manur mentions that in literature, as well as in other forms of art, food is frequently depicted with love and care (147). Narrations about food that are “suffused with nostalgia” help immigrants to return to their homeland at least through memories (Manur 27). When analyzing the works of an Indian writer Ketu Katrak, Manur mentions that she views food as an “intellectual and emotional anchor” for her as an immigrant subject (28). Such thoughts are not rare among immigrant writers whose portrayal of foodways helps them, as well as their readers, to revisit their native land at least using sense perception.
Understanding one’s identity as being closely associated with food is a common practice for Asian Americans. Ho explains how her childhood attempts to explain her origin found their reflection in mentioning that her mother “is from Jamaica; she speaks Jamaican and cooks Jamaican food” (“Feeding Identity” 2). The scholar recollects how foodways helped her to understand her identity, traditional cooking ways being “an indisputable part” of her existence and childhood memories (Ho, “Feeding Identity” 2). Employing food as one of the principles of identifying ethnicity in the works of Asian American authors, Ho analyses how adolescents from these ethnic minority groups manage the tensions between the American popular culture and Asian American stereotypes (“Feeding Identity” 3). The study by Hissom also focuses on the analysis of myths and stereotypes about minority groups living in the US (5-7). Hissom remarks that while the “ongoing racial debate” has helped to resolve white/black racial conflicts, Asian Americans are still “left out” of the rational conversation (11). The scholar emphasizes the positive stereotypes regarding Asian American people and how considering them as “intellectual, successful, and obedient citizens” prevents Americans from understanding the problems of poverty and exploitation existing in these immigrant groups (Hissom 11). Thus, through the medium of food concepts, it is possible and necessary to explain to the American people the realities of the conditions in which Asian Americans live.
Chan remarks that preferring ethnic cuisine may lead to racist attitudes towards immigrants on the part of the representatives of a country to which they moved (2). However, the researcher mentions that it is crucial to investigate the food culture represented in the works of Asian American writers to bring to light numerous inequalities existing in the past and present (Chan 2). Chan mentions that such literary works do not only focus on racism issues, but they also depict the problem of “power inequity” and outline other crucial problems (2). Scholars emphasize that many of the works written by Asian American authors are concentrated on the attempts of “claiming an American, as opposed to Asian, identity” (E. Kim 196). Due to this fact, the question appears whether such behavior is the manifestation of accommodation through the desire to “hide… ancestry” which is still unattainable (E. Kim 196). Another question is whether the endeavor to hide one’s belonging to Asian culture is the “celebration” of Asian Americans’ marginality and the assertion of protest against “being defined by domination” (E. Kim 197). Asian American literary works represent the attempts of many writers to speak for many different nationalities and class backgrounds, historical issues, generations, genders, and factors that frequently claim contradictory things (E. Kim 197). Further sections of the paper will discuss this diversity of topics and issues.
Ethnic Identity and Cultural Politics in John Okada’s No-No Boy
The union of literary studies and the investigation of nationalism discourse constitute an important contribution to the field of interdisciplinary inquiry. This union makes it possible to conclude that the structure of a discourse of “official nationalism” differs greatly from that of a realist novel (Amoko 35). As Amoko remarks, nationalism has become a crucial but disputed interpretive paradigm in literary inquiries (35). Much attention is paid to the so-called “minority discourses” that enable researchers to contest the “exclusionary social narratives” of national unification (Amoko 35). Among such prominent minority discourses, a novel No-No Boy written by a Japanese American writer John Okada occupies a prominent place. The book depicts the process of racialized migration and adjustment. Amoko argues that No-No Boy presents a negative model of minority identification (36). The events in the novel are set after World War II, and the main character, Ichiro, is trying to integrate into American society after spending four years in camp and prison (Okada 2). According to Amoko, the story is set in the “charged racial margins” of the American “nation-space” (40). The novel develops within the restraints of Japanese American culture. The adjustment to Ichiro’s perspective makes No-No Boy the ideal of a minority text. The story is an allegory of a struggle to accommodate a different nationality in the traumatic and violent period. Okada’s novel is the depiction of a failure of Japanese people to integrate into America in the after-war period (Amoko 40).
As Ling notices, the changing perception of No-No Boy leads to the emergence of significant questions concerning the Asian American literary criticism (31). Okada describes the inner struggle of a boy who refuses to defend the US at war. Thus, the novel is a narration of the “return of the prodigal” who realizes his “error” and makes an attempt to “reembrace” the promise of America (Ling 32). However, within the innocuous approach to Ichiro’s return, Okada presents a protagonist that cannot recapture his selfhood and whose continuous predicament personifies the outcomes of racism that inflamed the wartime imprisonment of Japanese Americans and continued to modify their identities and lifestyles after the war (Ling 32). According to Ling, the ambiguous character of Ichiro’s pursuit of identity is associated with the limited opportunity of disagreement allowed in the social and aesthetic discourses of the time (34). Moreover, the situation was complicated further due to the contradictory situation in which Ichiro found himself because of these discourses. Because of such circumstances, Ichiro is not able to protest his troubles entirely outside the accessible social options, which is why his struggle cannot become “simply recuperative” (Ling 34). As Ling argues, Okada negotiates the uncertainty of Ichiro’s problem by using several interconnected “positionalities”: the inherent critique of expectations concerning cultural identity in Ichiro’s confusing experience with Japanese nationalism and assimilation, the use of the mother-son dispute as an important place of disclosure of the historical tragedy imposed on Japanese Americans during World War II, and the demonstration of the promise and the struggle of finding a solution to Ichiro’s identity crisis (Ling 34-35).
In his analysis of No-No Boy, Chen remarks that the novel had been silenced for a long time due to political, historical, and social reasons (110). The time when it was published was the period when Japanese Americans strived to start their lives over when Americans tried to build a national consensus against communism when the American public was still not prepared to realize that the government had used to imprison people without having any solid reasons, and when neither Americans nor Japanese Americans wanted to be reminded of the disgraceful affair of “no-no” (Chen 110). The issue of “no-no” was concerned with negative answers to two questions regarding willingness to serve in the US armed forces. In the period when No-No Boy was published, this topic was considered as the revelation of racial discrimination and the “blemish” on the American spirit of equality and democracy (Chen 110). Chen remarks that the common analysis of No-No Boy as a political and historical book takes away from its psychoanalytic insight (110). According to the researcher, this insight makes it possible to understand the troubles of ethnic Americans and discern the phases of constructive subjectivity of the representatives of the minority (Chen 110).
Along with analyzing the cultural politics of the novel, Xu pays attention to the food practices depicted in it (“Sticky Rice Balls” 51). According to Xu, the majority of US ethnic minorities tend to declare the constitutional “we” as a political identity that grants migrants the privileges and rights available for all American citizens (“Sticky Rice Balls” 51). As Xu mentions, the constitutional “we” frequently struggle with the ethnic “we” in the US history, giving the former much more cultural and political power (“Sticky Rice Balls” 51). This state of rivalry is frequently reflected in such “rudimentary matters” as people’s favor of or disgust to the rituals, foods, and family traditions about their ethnic communities (Xu, “Sticky Rice Balls” 51). However, as Xu notes, “a healthy and secure community does not agonize over its cuisine and rituals” (“Sticky Rice Balls” 51). Therefore, honoring these rituals strengthens the community’s identification and unity. Moreover, the food people consume defines the power of emotional ties to one’s ethnicity and nation (Xu, “Sticky Rice Balls” 51-52). In the analysis of Okada’s No-No Boy, Xu connects the material with the formation of ethnic identity. The author attempts to follow the dynamics between “enjoyment/the maternal” and ethnic identification in Okada’s novel (Xu, “Sticky Rice Balls” 54). Xu argues that the two entities – enjoyment and the maternal – are situated within the same psychosocial dimension: semiotic. Moreover, enjoyment is the exhibition of the maternal (Xu, “Sticky Rice Balls” 54).
One of the greatest problems raised in the novel is the mother-son relationships. As Ichiro confesses, his mother cursed him “with her meanness and the hatred that you cannot see but which is always hating” (Okada 12). The young man cannot understand why his mother “killed” him “with her meanness and hatred” and made him forget what happiness was (Okada 12). Only when his mother is dead, Ichiro becomes able to feel “a little peace” (Okada 187). As Xu notices, the use of the mother’s death “as an instrument for character development” is associated with Okada’s uncertainty towards his ethnic community (“Sticky Rice Balls” 57). The rare moments of happiness in No-No Boy are “distinctively non-Japanese” (Xu, “Sticky Rice Balls” 58). The only significant portrayal of harmony and wholeness in the novel is the description of the last supper of one of the characters, Kenji, in his family circle (Xu, “Sticky Rice Balls” 58). The whole family has a great dinner of roast chicken and a lemon meringue pie and afterward watches a baseball game on TV (Okada 126).
This family picture is supposed to represent the assimilation to American culture, although Kenji is no less worried about his identity than Ichiro. In a contrast to the depiction of Kenji’s family dinner, Okada describes a traditional mealtime at Ichiro’s home: “eggs, fried with soy sauce, sliced cold meat, boiled cabbage and tea, and rice” (12). In opposition to Kenji’s home’s friendly atmosphere, Ichiro’s home is filled with conflicts and self-loathing. The main character associates his parents’ home with “the life-giving fragrance of bacon and eggs sizzling in a pan” (Okada 39). Xu views the close connection between food and national or ethnic identity as an indication of the truth that “cuisine and table narrative” play an important role in the training approaches of a community (“Enjoyment and Ethnic Identity” 19). Therefore, the scholar concludes that cooking, eating, and discussing cuisine are crucial to a community’s integrity and continuation. Xu mentions that the “destiny” of a community is contingent on the quality of its members’ nourishment (“Enjoyment and Ethnic Identity” 19). Okada’s novel No-No Boy is a great example of the interconnection between the community’s integrity and its food traditions.
Immigration and Food Identity in Bharati Mukherjee’s Works
In the settings of South Asian migrant culture, food is frequently employed as a symbol of “ethnic otherness” and a mode of reflecting “difference and alterity” (Khilnani 77). According to Khilnani, the “notorious smell” of Indian curry is often employed as a trope diminishing immigrants in various styles of popular culture (77). Meanwhile, a large number of these immigrants open Indian grocery stores and restaurants, thus making food their means of earning money. Therefore, as Khilnani concludes, food does two things at the same time: it designates the Asian Americans as “the Other” and entitles them with a “sense of selfhood” regarding financial security (77). Due to this fact, scholars tend to use foodways as the means of learning the “politics of difference” within the multicultural environment (Khilnani 77). A crucial issue about such research is investigating whether the status of food has been scaled down to a “marketable commodity” the value of which amounts to its “fetishized exoticism” (Khilnani 77).
Short stories written by Bharati Mukherjee are considered to be “fertile grounds” for the analysis of the theme of food in Asian American literature (Khilnani 77). In her “A Wife’s Story,” Mukherjee describes the process of immigration to the US in the following way: at first, a person does not “exist,” then he or she is “invisible,” later the immigrant becomes “funny,” and, finally, “disgusting” (27). Being aware of the “fragmentation of her identity” and the “unbridged gaps” between her missionary school education and her native heritage, the writer reflects all of these issues in her stories (Banerjee 189). Mukherjee’s works depict stories of survival of immigrants from the Third World (Banerjee 189). The picture of such immigrants is far from being coherent and homogeneous. Rather, it is a “three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle” created from the collection of races, religions, nationalities, traditions, and identities (Banerjee 189). The problem of immigrants not being accepted by the First World is not a mere “matter of ignorance” (Banerjee 200). As Banerjee notices, it is quite easy to research and verify facts (200). However, for Mukherjee’s characters, facts do not bear much significance. In her works, identities are “artifacts” that have to be made and “unmade” many times (Banerjee 200). What is significant in Mukherjee’s stories is the fundamental “transfigurative yet tenacious” character of migrants and the captivating stories they have collected during their lives (Banerjee 200).
In her analysis of Mukherjee’s works, Drake remarks that the writer’s employment of familiar American narratives to make them transformative and transform frequently leads to the misjudgment of her stories (60-61). According to Drake, Mukherjee’s works do not merely popularise American multicultural or honor assimilation (61). Rather, Mukherjee “stabilizes” America, “Hinduizes” assimilation, and depicts the real delights and cruelties of cultural exchange (Drake 61). To explore, create, and restore the multicultural myths of the US, Mukherjee denies “the expatriate’s nostalgia” (Drake 61). Unlike other authors whose immigrant characters are represented as foreigners, Mukherjee portrays her characters as settlers rather than guests or sojourners. In her works, the writer reminds America of the American Dream and the promises it gives to people: the “equal opportunity for all” and the right to truth and democracy (Drake 61). In Mukherjee’s stories, the “transformative violence” of hope is related to misleading promises given by the American Dream that presumes white supremacy and is propagated through capitalistic exploitations (Drake 61-62).
As Banerjee remarks, Mukherjee’s fiction is “an endless treasury of untold stories” all of which are unique in their ways (190). One of the prominent themes of Mukherjee’s works is that of food. The depiction of one’s identity through foodways in the writer’s stories is analyzed by many scholars. Khilnani mentions that there is a high level of comfort within the portrayal of immigrants’ “cultural moorings” in the time when they receive society’s recognition (78). However, Khilnani also remarks that in Mukherjee’s works, the “seemingly harmonious” assimilation pattern gives the impression of suspicion (78). In “Orbiting,” the main character Rindy views her boyfriend Roashan from a new perspective as she watches him slicing the Thanksgiving turkey into perfectly divided pieces. An immigrant from Afghanistan, Roashan works hard to save money for attending the Institute of Technology in New Jersey. The primary reason why Rindy finds Roashan handsome is that he comes from a “culture of pain,” even though he is “ashamed” of it (Mukherjee 74). At work, Roashan butcher chickens, and this profession may seem to involve cruelty. However, Rindy views her boyfriend as a “chance to heal the world” (Mukherjee 74). Roashan is represented as an object of the “exotic gaze” of the Americans due to the ethnicity markers being “fetishized” (Khilnani 78). The theme of food in the story is also reflected in Rindy’s father’s view on the process of cooking. He “cannot imagine cooking as self-expression” and thinks that it is necessary to cook “for someone” (Mukherjee 57). Therefore, the story reveals people’s attitudes towards food as an approach to viewing identity.
Food Culture in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies”
In the spheres of anthropology and sociology, the analysis of food habits occupies a prominent place (Khilnani 76). Food practices of various nations are investigated as “material indicators” of migrants’ lives and as an approach with the help of which migrants form their fictional homeland (77). People’s consumption patterns may represent such material concerns as gender, class, or race. At the same time, foodways may serve as manifestations of migrants’ cultural and ethnic relations (Khilnani 77). Also, food practices can reveal social and historical explorations of people belonging to various diasporic communities.
One of the most prominent representatives of Asian American descent whose works reflect the themes of food and identity is Jhumpa Lahiri. In his collection of short stories “Interpreter of Maladies,” the author employs food and dining as a means of portraying the decline of family bonds, culture, and community through the evolution from Indian to American styles of life (Godfree). As well as many other literary works by Asian American authors, the collection “Interpreter of Maladies” employs food as a metaphor to build and portray the relationships to “racialized subjectivity” and discusses the problems of desire, assimilation, and authenticity (Williams 70).
As Williams emphasizes, the depiction of food in Lahiri’s stories reflects the emotional and monetary poverty of the characters and reveals their isolation (70). Williams remarks that while all of the stories in the collection contain some food metaphors, culinary practice and knowledge are particularly significant in “A Temporary Matter,” “Mrs. Sen’s,” and “This Blessed House” (70). In these narrations, food serves as an instrument for characters to declare subjectivity in ways that operate “as an alternative to the dominant culture” (Williams 70). Particularly, Williams remarks that the characters of female immigrants in Lahiri’s stories confuse the “comfortable association between “home” and food” (70). In Lahiri’s stories, the neglected female diasporic subject is highlighted, and the things people consume, as well as how they consume them, are described with the importance that draws attention to the issues of diaspora and migration (Williams 70). Female characters in Lahiri’s stories employ foodways to create their own “racialized subjectivity” and to bring about agency (Williams 70).
“A Temporary Matter,” tells a story of a young couple who drift apart after their baby is born dead. The husband and wife try to avoid each other spending “as much as much time on separate floors as possible” (Lahiri 4). However, when they are forced to spend a few evenings dining together due to a power cut, their pain and changes within them become disclosed. Lahiri uses foodways to show Shukumar’s reflection on his wife’s changed attitude to life. Earlier, she used to buy food in abundance. Whenever she did the shopping, “the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles of olive oil and corn oil” (Lahiri 6). There were “endless boxes of pasta in all shapes and colors,” “sacks of basmati rice,” “whole sides of lambs and goats” and other products in their freezer and pantry so that Shoba could always treat her guests or unexpected visitors (Lahiri 6).
Sadly, Shukumar realizes that his wife does not feel any interest in anything, including cooking. Previously, they “marveled at how much food they’d bought” every time they returned from a supermarket (Lahiri 7). Moreover, the food “never went to waste” (Lahiri 7). Now, the shelves are gradually becoming empty, reflecting the woman’s emotional state. On the contrary, Shukumar’s behavior is depicted through his consumption patterns. The man “had been going through their supplies steadily” to cook something for the two of them (Lahiri 7). The few evenings they spend together allow them to make some confessions that each of them has been afraid to speak up but felt so eager to utter. Ultimately, Lahiri reveals that Shukumar’s hopes for the improvement of their relationships were false when Shoba confesses to him that she has found an apartment for herself and is going to move (23). Thus, the theme of food is employed in this story to show the partners’ present isolation and emptiness as opposed to their previous closeness.
Another story from the collection that emphasizes food as a means of gaining identity is “Mrs. Sen’s.” Food performs the function of an “atavistic link” to the main character’s home memories (Khilnani 77). Mrs. Sen, whose name is not mentioned in the text, constantly refers to herself as Mr. Sen’s wife and reiterates that he “teaches mathematics at the university” (Lahiri 112). Her existence is only substantiated through buying authentic Bengali ingredients and cooking traditional “sumptuous” meals (Khilnani 77). In this story, there are many lists of products and recipe descriptions in which the author depicts “the intricate details” associated with food preparation and the “ceremonious value” attributed to them (Khilnani 77). The importance of food for Mrs. Sen is not only gastronomic; it provides “emotional nutrition” by appealing to the memories of her family and native land (Khilnani 77).
However, as Williams notices, the story focuses on “the parade of components” while it never pays attention to the final dish (73). Sometimes, Mrs. Sen gets distracted from cooking and talks to Elliot, the boy she looks after, about India. Once, she tells him that if anything happens “at home,” it is enough to scream to draw the neighbors’ attention and call for their help (Lahiri 116). In the US, she concludes, such an approach will not work. This and other details mentioned in the story indicate how much the woman misses her native country and how difficult it is for her to accommodate to a new place where she had to move because of her husband. Her stories and cooking are “a means of crafting her identity” that she has lost (Williams 74). As Williams concludes, food preparation is connected to Mrs. Sen’s subjectivity, ethnic identity, and the ability to make a connection with other people (74).
While the two previous narrations discuss the independence granted to women through their knowledge of national food, “This Blessed House” tells a story of how a woman’s insufficient knowledge of traditions and the desire to improvise leads to “transformation and constructive relationships” (Williams 75). Along with getting accustomed to a new country and house, a young couple, Sanjeev and Twinkle, discover unknown things about food and religion. At the beginning of the story, Twinkle finds a bottle of vinegar that is considered as something unneeded by her husband (Lahiri 136). Throughout the story, spouses’ arguments are based on feelings of self-awareness and confidence. At one point, the husband is angry because his wife has not put down the recipe for some dish (Lahiri 144). However, what Sanjeev finds irresponsible about his wife is regarded as the “sense of self-possession” by Twinkle (Williams 76). The central idea of the story that is reflected through food patterns emphasizes that Twinkle’s flexible attitudes towards objects, culture, and food may “contain the transformative potential” for their marriage (Williams 77).
Therefore, the ideas reflected in Lahiri’s short stories included in the collection “Interpreter of Maladies” are concerned with viewing food as a means of searching self-identity in a foreign country, the difficulties encountered during this process, and the positive outcomes reached with its help. For female characters, cooking is something connecting them with their native country or an opportunity to learn something about their new home. In Lahiri’s stories, food helps migrants to create a world of their own despite being among strangers and having no relatives or friends beside them.
Food and Ethnic Experience in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
As Outka notices, it is not easy to define Kingston’s The Woman Warrior generically (447). Critics argue whether the book should be regarded as a work of fiction, an autobiography, history, biography, or a mix of a few of them, as well as they, cannot agree upon the authors’ faithfulness to her culture and sources (Outka 447). However, there is one thing that is acknowledged by all of them: Kingston’s novel is an attempt to create an identity, to cross over the distance from her adolescent years to the person narrating the story. When taking into consideration this narrow sense, The Woman Warrior may be regarded as an autobiography – a genre that combines fiction and facts (Outka 447-448).
Outka remarks that to percept Kingston’s autobiography fiction, one has to realize that both truthful and imagined facts throughout the text are important for the author (448). The genius of The Woman Warrior, as defined by Outka, is in Kingston’s power to declare an autobiographical self-identity that is not rebellious, that rejects cultural and racial essentialism, and that will not agree to exchange subtlety for coherence (449). In an attempt to articulate her “self” that is enduring and dynamic at the same time, Kingston employs the theme of food along with creative imagination (Outka 451). The main character, Maxine, has to decide how to dream and to eat to withstand the psychological and physical levels the idea of Chinese patriarchy which asserts that females are nothing more than merely “bodies unworthy even of nourishment” (Outka 451). Thus, Maxine has to proclaim her fundamental bodily existence as “something in itself eminently worth feeding” while simultaneously supporting her imaginative and intellectual independence and protesting against being reduced to “either body or mind” (Outka 451).
In her analysis of Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Wong remarks that it is impossible for ethnic writers to entirely avoid the “collective historical experience of oppression” no matter how privileged these authors may be individually (“Necessity and Extravagance” 4). As Wong mentions, such impossibility appears due to realities of the present-day American society in which the mere fact of writing and having one’s works published is itself “a political statement” (“Necessity and Extravagance” 4-5). Thus, Wong outlines two claims about ethnic writers, the first one being the basic human need to declare the specificity of their personal experiences regardless of how nonconforming they may be, particularly when the matter concerns the atonement of their painful past (“Necessity and Extravagance” 5). The second claim is the requirement to express the support of those who have suffered for similar reasons.
In this case, the authors’ gift of writing turns to be merely a method for “individual therapy or gratification” (Wong, “Necessity and Extravagance” 5). Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is an attempt to resolve these claims on ethnic writers. As Wong remarks, Kingston depicts the struggle of the main character towards reaching a balance between self-realization and social accountability (“Necessity and Extravagance” 5). Wong concludes that even though the American society is becoming easier to understand, it does not mean that no misreading of ethnic literature will exist merely because writers perform a good job “as artists” (“Necessity and Extravagance” 24). Thus, stereotyping is not always a bad thing. However, when it starts to turn down people’s uniqueness, stereotyping acquires a detrimental character (Wong, “Necessity and Extravagance” 24).
The Woman Warrior is also known for discussing gender issues related to the identity of Chinese women both in their native society and in the American one. Cheung remarks that many issues engendered Kingston’s decision to include the discussion of the aspects of identity and feminization in her The Woman Warrior (158). The unfair treatment of Chinese women by Chinese American men and the “diehard” concepts of masculinity and femininity is Western and Asian cultures were the reasons why the debates on gender roles were initiated and had evolved (Cheung 158). The beginning of feminism gave energy to gender antagonism, and the most vivid reflection of this concept is noticed in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (Cheung 161). Even the author herself is believed to be “in the grips” of conflicting feelings and emotions (Cheung 163). Throughout her work, Kingston endeavors to agree in asserting of her ethnic heritage and sabotaging patriarchy (Cheung 168). Thus, she employs the themes of food and identity in The Woman Warrior to draw the public’s attention to the problems of unequal treatment of women in general and females of Chinese American descent in particular.
Asian American History and Food in Frank Chin’s Donald Duk
Frank Chin is one of the most controversial authors of Asian American descent. However, despite the controversy aroused by his works, the majority of scholars agree that the predominant place in his literary career belongs to the theme of masculinity (Xu, “Masculinity, Food, and Appetite” 37). In many of his works, Chin attempts to dismantle the American authoritative and impoverishing representations of Asian American men. Xu argues that Chin’s works constitute not only a significant but also a necessary part of the evolution process undergone by Asian American aesthetics (“Masculinity, Food, and Appetite” 37). Chin’s novel Donald Duk tells a coming-of-age story of a Chinese American boy who has difficulty finding his identity. The book suggests an amusing and confident description of several Chinese American males whose gender evolution is closely associated with Chinese cuisine and literature and Hong Kong kung fu movies (Xu, “Masculinity, Food, and Appetite” 38). Food plays a significant role in the gender imaginary of Donald Duk. In this novel, a kitchen is a place for the “assertion of masculinity” where the language of cooking frequently conjures the pictures of war and martial arts (Xu, “Masculinity, Food, and Appetite” 38). As Xu remarks, in an attempt to “masculinize” Asian American men, Chin regularly resorts to such masculine pleasures as consumption, violence, and sex (“Masculinity, Food, and Appetite” 38).
The central problem of Donald Duk is the main character’s self-loathing engendered by the orientalist education that he obtains at a private school. Donald, a boy who is about to turn twelve, calls his school “a place where the Chinese are comfortable hating Chinese” (Chin 2). The school acts as a trigger of erasing the boy’s ethnic identification using leading the way to assimilation. This process of cultural alienation turns the ethnic customs into something shameful and ridiculous (“Masculinity, Food, and Appetite” 38). One of how the boy’s denial of native ethnicity is reflected is food. In an attempt to become assimilated into America, Donald eats “Steaks” and “Chops” which in his imagination constitute “pure American food” (Chin 8). At the same time, the boy expresses disgust towards Chinese food since he believes that by refusing to consume it he becomes less of a Chinese and more of an American. He besmirches the king’s clam dish by saying that it looks like “the sole of my Reeboks sliced real thin” (Chin 46). What is more, Donald mentions that the things Chinese do, believe in, and eat are “funny” (Chin 3).
The novel is rich in food images and metaphors. As Ho mentions, it is possible to say that food “structures” the text of the novel (“Consuming Asian American History” 29). The father of the main character owns a restaurant in Chinatown and works as a chef there. Throughout the novel, the boy has hallucinatory dreams each of which starts with the description of meals. Apart from using food concepts as “colorful details,” Chin employs them as a system of communication enabling characters to exchange messages (Ho, “Consuming Asian American History” 29). The food in Donald Duk expresses a variety of meanings concerning the ethnic identity and class status. With the help of food metaphors, Chin communicates the ideas of “restoration, recovery, and recuperation” of Chinese American culture and history (Ho, “Consuming Asian American History” 29). The central message of the author’s pride in his ethnicity is condensed in King’s, Donald’s father’s, words used to explain his preparations for the New Year banquet: “I will restore ways that have become abandoned and recover knowledge that has been lost” (Chin 63).
Therefore, Chin employs the image of dried food “reconstituted and transformed” through cooking as an image of the reinstatement of Chinese culture into America (Ho, “Consuming Asian American History” 29-30). When King describes the process of preparation for the opera role to his son, he speaks of the diet he has to follow before the performance: “I soak dried oysters, dried vegetables, dried seeds” (Chin 68). As Donald’s father remarks, the water and the process of cooking make up “the five elements and the mandate of heaven” (Chin 68). According to Ho, the five elements mentioned by King – earth, wood, water, fire, and metal – form the balance of nature and heaven in Chinese cosmology (“Consuming Asian American History” 30). Thus, Ho assumes that the reconstitution of these ingredients into a meal symbolizes the Chinese input in American history and culture (“Consuming Asian American History” 30). Therefore, the description of foodways in Donald Duk helps to communicate identity and reveals the complicated issues related to the assimilation into a different culture.
Food Culture and Sexuality in Mei Ng’s Eating Chinese Food Naked
There are two major themes depicted in Mei Ng’s Eating Chinese Food Naked: sexuality and food. In the novel, a subjectivity that is absorbed in ethnicity, gender, diaspora, space, and coloniality is outlined using foodways and sexual desires (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 127). Ng’s Eating Chinese Food Naked tells a story of a contemporary character whose sexuality changes from hetero- to bisexuality, a shifting identity that analyses the rigidity of the hetero/homo division. The novel evolves in the middle of a mixture composed of food, sex, and ethnicity in which the author outlines her protagonist’s search for sexual identity (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 127). The main character’s name is Ruby Lee, and she unwillingly returns to her parents’ home after graduating from a university. Using a variety of tropes and imageries, Ng depicts the rivalry between the “ethnic, domestic” space and the “cosmopolitan” environment of streets, cafes, and diners (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 127). The motifs of food, sexuality, and ethnicity are intertwined in these tensions between ethnic and cosmopolitan dimensions. The language of food, space, ethnicity, and sexuality builds Ruby’s transition from a heterosexual who has a subconscious desire for females to a strange consciousness that ignores all the rules (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 127).
While the very title of the novel presupposes the connection between food and sex, there is also one more connotation in it that involves anxiety and vulnerability in practicing ethnic foodways. The protagonist’s journey from Manhattan to Queens and back to Manhattan symbolizes the evolution of her sexual desires (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 147-148). At first, the major conflict of the novel seems to be Ruby’s uncertainty about her future. However, soon it becomes obvious that it is her uncertainty about her sexuality that bothers her most of all. Moreover, this state of confusion is aggravated by the character’s ethnic anxiety. Both of the uncertainties are reflected using food references combined with spatial pressure between the “anonymity” and “permissiveness” suggested by the two places where the girl lives (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 148). Resolutions to these issues are contingent on the spatial movement and culinary allusions. The domestic environment in Eating Chinese Food Naked spotlights a variety of conflicts: between the two immigrant spouses, between immigrant parents and their daughter who was born in America, and the conflict “within the daughter” between love and embarrassment of her background (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 148).
Ng frequently employs food descriptions to give an account of domestic space in Ruby’s parents’ home. When Ruby returns home, she notices that her parents stopped eating together: her mother “fixed a plate for herself and went down to the basement while her father ate in the kitchen by himself” (Ng 11). This feature sets the tone of the novel and prepares the reader for the family problems with which Ruby is going to deal. Also, the pattern of food consumption is a metaphor for Ruby’s parents’ relationships since it stands for the life of separation that they have settled for themselves (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 148). While parents and their daughters do not tend to express their feelings passionately, their affections are primarily reflected through food. Probably it was the lack of warmth between her parents that made Ruby grow up being a person who is scared of intimacy even though she wants it. However, the family’s expression of affection using food never makes Ruby hesitate about her parents’ love for her (Xu, “Sexuality, Colonialism” 149).
Yanqiong considers Eating Chinese Food Naked as a reflection of Chinese immigrants’ structuring cultural identity in the circumstances of multiculturalism (354). Yanqiong argues that Ng’s novel is a cultural anti-representation of identity due to several reasons (356). The first proof is that the events in the story take place in Chinatown that serves as a “frontier” to oppose cultural representation (Yanqiong 356). The second reason is that the main character decides to stay in Chinatown for her mother even though she does not want to live in her parents’ home at the beginning. The third explanation of Yanqiong’s argument is that eventually, Ruby leaves Chinatown, which demonstrates her openness and flexibility during the formation of the cultural identity of Chinese immigrants against the multi-cultural settings (356).
Conclusion
It is not possible to understand a nation without knowing its traditions and the preferences of its representatives. It is even more difficult to realize the peculiarities of an immigrant minority since these people are not only different from the others but they also need to establish their right to live as they wish in a place that is not historically their home. One of the most profound issues that help representatives of immigrant groups to establish their identity is their foodways. Whether people choose to conform to the consumption traditions that pertain to their native country or decide to alter their food patterns and assimilate to the new settings, this choice always suggests much information about these immigrant groups. The paper has covered a variety of themes and issues related to the concept of food as it is depicted in the works of Asian American writers. In some of the novels and short stories, foodways are the main topic. In other literary works, food serves as only one of the major issues allowing authors to analyze immigrants’ ways of accommodating in the US and their approaches to preserving their identity while trying to acquire the elements of a new one.
There is a variety of works by Asian American authors focused on food themes, which makes it easy to identify subthemes and trace similarities and differences in approaches. John Okada’s No-No Boy and Frank Chin’s Donald Duk are concentrated on the theme of self-loathing and discuss the difficulty that protagonists meet when trying to assimilate into the new environment. Another popular topic is the portrayal of relationships between parents and children. In No-No Boy, John Okada describes the complicated ways of communicating that exist between a mother and son. Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Mei Ng’s Eating Chinese Food Naked reveal the relationships between a mother and daughter. Some authors emphasize masculinity and femininity as the aspects of accommodation and the factors influencing the character’s identity. In The Woman Warrior, Kingston pays much attention to feministic revelations and obstacles met by Chinese women. In Donald Duk, Chin discusses masculinity and asserts that it has much influence on building identity. The works by Jhumpa Lahiri and Bharati Mukherjee describe the difficulties of finding one’s ethnic identity and the possibility of obtaining it with the help of following traditional food patterns. Apart from these themes, Asian American writers also pay attention to the issues of sexuality, culture, and history.
The analysis of literary works created by Asian American writers makes it possible to make the following conclusions. Firstly, food plays a crucial role in the process of forming and sustaining nations’ cultural identity. Secondly, whether immigrants choose to follow their native foodways or if they prefer to change their food patterns and assimilate some customs favored in the country to which they moved, it has much to say about their level of ethnic identity, readiness to change, or willingness to combine the two approaches. Thirdly, food preferences reflect much more than family relationships or traditions. They can also reveal people’s attitudes towards themselves and others or indicate the spiritual condition of individuals. Finally, food patterns may serve as a basis for analyzing people’s sexual preferences, their character, and behavioral choices. The analysis of literary works created by Asian American authors gives insight into many issues related to the life of immigrants on new land, their ways of accommodating, and challenges they have to face on their way of trying to build a new life and create new opportunities for themselves and their families.
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