Eating Identities : Reading Food in Asian American Literature
The French epicure and gastronome Brillat-Savarin declared,'Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.'Wenying Xu infuses this notion with cultural-political energy by extending it to an ethnic group known for its cuisines: Asian Americans. She begins with the general argument that eatin...
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University of Hawaii Press
2008
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=236718&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: nlebk uiTerm: 236718 longDbName: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: btl: Eating Identities : Reading Food in Asian American Literature aug: au: Wenying Xu sertl: UPCC Book Collections on Project MUSE isbn: 9780824831950 9780824862282 9780824878436 imageinfo: pubinfo: dt: @attributes: year: 2008 month: 01 day: 01 dtAvail: @attributes: year: 2014 month: 02 day: 04 pub: University of Hawaii Press pubContract: University of Hawai'i place: Honolulu price: 0.01 limitsGroup: maxCheckoutDays: 1500 pda: N printPagesOffline: 100 printPagesOnline: 100 previewPages: 10000 prePubGroup: dewey: @attributes: class: 810.93559 item: 810 .93559 lc: @attributes: class: PS153.A84 item: PS 153 .A84 artinfo: ui: 236718 1132297069 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: EB doid: NL$236718$PDF caption: PDF download: Y tig: atl: Eating Identities : Reading Food in Asian American Literature ptl: Eating Identities aug: au: Wenying Xu su: Food habits in literature Dinners and dining in literature American literature--Asian American authors--History and criticism Gastronomy in literature Cooking in literature Food habits--Social aspects Asian Americans--Intellectual life Asian Americans in literature sug: subj: LITERARY CRITICISM / Asian American & Pacific Islander COOKING / General SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / Asian American & Pacific Islander Studies Food habits in literature Dinners and dining in literature American literature--Asian American authors--History and criticism Gastronomy in literature Cooking in literature Food habits--Social aspects Asian Americans--Intellectual life Asian Americans in literature ab: The French epicure and gastronome Brillat-Savarin declared,'Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.'Wenying Xu infuses this notion with cultural-political energy by extending it to an ethnic group known for its cuisines: Asian Americans. She begins with the general argument that eating is a means of becoming—not simply in the sense of nourishment but more importantly of what we choose to eat, what we can afford to eat, what we secretly crave but are ashamed to eat in front of others, and how we eat. Food, as the most significant medium of traffic between the inside and outside of our bodies, organizes, signifies, and legitimates our sense of self and distinguishes us from others, who practice different foodways.Narrowing her scope, Xu reveals how cooking, eating, and food fashion Asian American identities in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, class, diaspora, and sexuality. She provides lucid and informed interpretations of seven Asian American writers (John Okada, Joy Kogawa, Frank Chin, Li-Young Lee, David Wong Louie, Mei Ng, and Monique Truong) and places these identity issues in the fascinating spaces of food, hunger, consumption, appetite, desire, and orality. Asian American literature abounds in culinary metaphors and references, but few scholars have made sense of them in a meaningful way. Most literary critics perceive alimentary references as narrative strategies or part of the background; Xu takes food as the central site of cultural and political struggles waged in the seemingly private domain of desire in the lives of Asian Americans. Eating Identities is the first book to link food to a wide range of Asian American concerns such as race and sexuality. Unlike most sociological studies, which center on empirical analyses of the relationship between food and society, it focuses on how food practices influence psychological and ontological formations and thus contributes significantly to the growing field of food studies. For students of literature, this tantalizing work offers an illuminating lesson on how to read the multivalent meanings of food and eating in literary texts. pubtype: eBook doctype: Book ougenre: Book language: English copyright: @attributes: flag: N copyrightText: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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