Eating identities

Description:

'Eating Identities' is the first book to link food to a wide range of Asian American concerns such as race and sexuality. Xu 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), revealing how cooking, eating, and food fashion Asian American identities in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, class, diaspora, and sexuality. 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. 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.

subjects: American literature,  Asian American authors,  Asian Americans,  Asian Americans in literature,  Cookery in literature,  Dinners and dining in literature,  Food habits,  Food habits in literature,  Gastronomy in literature,  History and criticism,  Intellectual life,  Social aspects of Food habits,  American literature -- Asian American authors -- History and criticism,  Asian Americans -- Intellectual life,  Food habits -- Social aspects,  American literature, asian american authors, history and criticism,  Asian americans in literature,  Cooking in literature,  History,  Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800