A Gastrocritical Approach to Diana Abu-Jaber's The Language of Baklava and Shoba Narayan’s Monsoon Diary

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

Al-Alsun,, Luxor University

المستخلص

Abstract
The aim of this study is to apply a gastrocritical approach to Diana Abu-Jaber’s The Language of Baklava and Shoba Narayan’s Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes, showing how their culinary memoir could weave some food recipes into personal experiences while discussing some cross-cultural issues. Gastrocriticism is a growing theory that discusses food and foodways in literary texts. By analyzing Abu-Jaber’s and Narayan’s memoirs, readers can realize the relationship between food and transnational identity of migrant writers as they have to move from their native countries to some different destinations affirming their experiences while describing some food recipes. Describing recipes from their original countries or destination countries show the writers’ abilities to bridge the gap between two different cultures. In addition, food has been utilized by Abu-Jaber and Narayan to delineate their concepts of some gender issues, subverting some traditional stereotypical gender roles and challenging some others. Besides, in their food memoirs, they both followed a similar pattern to structure the forms of their food writings by relating some chronological life experiences and incidents to certain meals, revealing a distinguished cultural identity.

الكلمات الرئيسية

الموضوعات الرئيسية