Eating identities : reading food in Asian American literature /

Xu, Wenying,

Eating identities : reading food in Asian American literature / Wenying Xu. - 1 online resource (ix, 195 pages)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-189) and index.

Enjoyment and ethnic identity in No-no boy and Obasan -- Masculinity, food, and appetite in Frank Chin's Donald Duk and "The eat and run midnight people" -- Class and cuisine: David Wong Louie's The barbarians are coming -- Diaspora, transcendentalism, and ethnic gastronomy in the works of Li-Young Lee -- Sexuality, colonialism, and ethnicity in Monique Truong's The book of salt and Mei Ng's Eating Chinese food naked -- Epilogue: eating identities.

Use copy Open Access

'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.


Electronic reproduction.
[Place of publication not identified] :
HathiTrust Digital Library,
2010.


Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002.
http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212


English.

9781435666771 1435666771 9780824862282 0824862287 9780824878436 0824878434

22573/ctt62tp6j JSTOR 101448 Knowledge Unlatched


American literature--Asian American authors--History and criticism.
Gastronomy in literature.
Food habits in literature.
Dinners and dining in literature.
Cooking in literature.
Asian Americans--Intellectual life.
Asian Americans in literature.
Food habits--Social aspects.
LITERARY CRITICISM--American--General.
LITERARY CRITICISM--American--Asian American.
American literature--Asian American authors.
Asian Americans in literature.
Asian Americans--Intellectual life.
Cooking in literature.
Dinners and dining in literature.
Food habits in literature.
Food habits--Social aspects.
Gastronomy in literature.


Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.

PS153.A84 / X8 2008eb

810.9/3559