Consuming Appetites, Disappearing Meals: Things Becoming Food in Chana Porters The Thick and the Lean
This paper aims to highlight the complex entanglements between the material and metaphorical meanings of food in literature through a close reading of Chana Porters The Thick and the Lean (2023). The novel follows the appetites and aspirations of three women in an alternative world where good food is taboo and culinary pleasures are forbidden; instead, abstinence from eating is hailed as the ultimate form of devotion. Drawing on Emma Roes conceptualization of things becoming food, this paper examines the mechanism through which foodstuff gainsor fails to gainmeaning in Porters food-averse universe. It argues that the novel challenges conventional perceptions of female appetites by reconfiguring edibility as constituted through intercorporeal as well as discursive practices. The paper approaches this process as a form of translation, contending that Porter integrates content and form to highlight the resistive potential of food and female appetites in capitalist food systems. 2025 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Critique - Studies in Contemporary Fiction;
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https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2025.2594674 https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105023486983?origin=resultslist
Nivedita T.C., Department of English and Cultural Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to Be University), Bengaluru, India; Nayar CV A., Department of English and Cultural Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to Be University), Bengaluru, India