Description
Book SynopsisWhether perusing a recipe or learning what a literary character eats, readers approach a text differently when reading about food. Read My Plate: The Literature of Food explores what narrators and characters (in fiction, in performance, and in the popular genre of the food memoir) cook and eat. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the inmates of the Terezin concentration camp, performance artist Karen Finley, novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and the celebrated chef-turned-travel-journalist Anthony Bourdain are just a few examples of the writers whose works are discussed. Close readings of the literal and figurative plates in these texts allow a unique form of intimate access to the speakers' feelings and memories and helps readers to understand more about how the dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and social class affect what the narrators/characters eat, from tourtière to collard greens to a school lunch bento box.
Trade ReviewDeborah R. Geis expands our understanding of the literature of food, both in terms of genre and of methods to approach a portion of food writing. Her delicate explication of food memoir and performance art through lenses of gender, race, and migration melds with treatment of more traditional texts of fiction and poetry to yield a deeply empathetic contemplation about food’s personal and political resonance. -- Miriam Mara, Arizona State University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Chapter One. The Hungry Yawp: Eating and Orality in Whitman and Ginsberg Chapter Two. The Politics of Gluttony in Second-Generation Holocaust Literature Chapter Three. Chukla Bukla: Cooking, Bengali-Indian-Anglo-American Writers, and the Merging of Cultures Chapter Four. Feeding the Audience: Food, Feminism, and Performance Art Chapter Five. The Last Black Man’s Fried Chicken: Soul Food, Memory, and African American Culinary Writing Chapter Six. Cooking Up a Storm: Recent Food Memoirs and the Angry Daughter Chapter Seven. Eat and Run: Food Writing, Masculinity, and the “Male Midlife Crisis” Chapter Eight. School Lunch: Bicultural Conflicts in Asian-American Women’s Food Memoirs Conclusion Bibliography Index About the Author
