A feminist study of food in select culinary narratives

A feminist study of food in select culinary narratives

English Studies

An academic study of food entails a study of food at the intersection of individual experience, socio-cultural significance and global politics of food. A study of the emerging genre of culinary narratives, therefore, is a study of women’s experience of food, shaped by the socio-cultural context she occupies and its interaction with the world food scenario. This research titled “A Feminist Study of Food in Select Culinary Narratives” studies Indian immigrant women’s relationship with food in the twenty-first century globalised, capitalist, multicultural, American society. The research places itself within the broader framework of literature, cultural and women’s studies and focuses on the emerging genre of South-Asian diasporic culinary narratives. It, therefore, adds to the limited scholarship on the genre of diasporic culinary narratives by looking at the works of Shoba Narayan’s Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes (2003),Amulya Malladi’s
Serving Crazy with Curry (2007), Bharti Kirchner’s Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries (2009) and Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta’s Bong Mom’s Cookbook (2013).Consequently, the research examines the various roles performed by food, as the immigrant woman navigates her geographical and cultural displacement. In this context, the research views food as a means for immigrant women to articulate their sense of ‘self’ and critiquing the standardization of women’s relationship with food by the capitalist food industry. Moreover, critiques of capitalist notions of women’s relationship with food further enables the select texts to re-envision women’s relationship with the kitchen and domestic work. The research also highlights the difference in the first and second generation immigrant women’s use of food to navigate their displacement.

Datta, Ruchira - 1730082

CHRIST (Deemed to be University)

English

PhD