In “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” Geeta Kothari kicks off her writing with a memory embodying her mother and her as they pop open a fresh can of very potent fishy smelling tuna, which her mother buys to satisfy Kothari’s yearning for what she calls “American food” (922). Since Kothari’s family is part of the Indian culture, she is restricted from eating certain kinds of foods. For Kothari, this is a constant struggle throughout her childhood. She wants the freedom to eat what her classmates and cousins do. Deeper into her story she comments on how she marries a man who eats those same American foods she used to crave when younger, and is feeling concerned that her husband might choose another wife who eats similar foods. Finally, to accompany her concerns she has trouble recreating dishes from her own culture in her adulthood. …show more content…
As I see it, Kothari is having trouble finding her identity due to her cultural experiences. She first struggles with being distinctly different than other kids. Kothari disliked that her mother made her eat foods that were undesirable to her, instead of the American food she wanted. As this quote directly from the writting supports my last statement “I want to eat what the kids at school eat: bologna, hot dogs, salami – foods my parents find repugnant” (922). As Kothari emerges into adulthood she soon realizes she can’t duplicate the dishes her mother made despite being taught a thousand times, but yet she can’t seem to stand American food either. It seems as if she is stuck between two cultures, and therefore is confused on her identity and where she fits in
“Food as thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating,” is an article written by Mary Maxfield in response or reaction to Michael Pollan’s “Escape from the Western Diet”. Michael Pollan tried to enlighten the readers about what they should eat or not in order to stay healthy by offering and proposing a simple theory: “the elimination of processed foods” (443).
The meal, and more specifically the concept of the family meal, has traditional connotations of comfort and togetherness. As shown in three of Faulkner’s short stories in “The Country”, disruptions in the life of the family are often reinforced in the plot of the story by disruptions in the meal.
Neither life nor culture can be sustained without food. On a very basic level, food is fundamentally essential for life, not simply to exist, but also to thrive. A means by which carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, nutrients, and calories are introduced into the body, food is a mechanism of survival. However, on a more abstract level, food is also fundamentally essential for culture by establishing its perimeters and dimensions and in shaping its authenticity and character. Food becomes the carbohydrates and calories that maintain any culture. Food offers a dynamic cross-section of man's tendencies. "Nourishment, a basic biological need," argues anthropologist Sidney Mintz, "becomes something else because we humans transform it symbolically into a system of meaning for much more than itself" (7). By examining food consumption and preparation, much is discoverd regarding the intricacies of culture. The preparation and consumption of food in Puritan society are reflected in Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. Rowlandson's view of food and admissions of hunger in the infancy of her captivity cast a revealing light upon the roots of her conceptions and ideas about food and, more generally, about her culture's conceptions and ideas about food. As the conflict between her soul and her stomach raged over food, Rowlandson's attitudes toward the Native Americans' preparation and consumption of food reflect the socialization of the Puritans to believe that every meal ...
In the book published in 2006, the Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural history of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, is a non-fiction book about American eating habits and the food dilemma that many Americans are facing today. Pollan begins the book by discussing the dilemma of the omnivore like ourselves, a creature with many choices of food. Pollan decides to learn the root to the food dilemma by examining the three primary food chains: industrial food chain, the organic food chain, and the hunter-gathering food chain. His journey begins by first exploring the industrialized food industry. Pollan examines the industry by following both corn and cow from the beginning through the industrialized process. The work on the corn fields of George Naylor shows him that the industrial system has made corn appears nearly in all products in the supermarket (Pollan 33-37). Pollen then decides to purchase a steer which allows him to see the industrialized monoculture of beef production and how mass production produces food to serve the society. Following his journey, Pollan and his family eat a meal at McDonald's restaurant. Pollan realizes that he and very few people actually understand how such a meal is created. By examining the different food paths available to modern man and by analyzing those paths, Pollan argues that there is a basic relation between nature and the human. The food choice and what we eat represents a connection with our natural world. The industrial food ruins that ecological connections. In fact, the modern agribusiness has lost touch with the natural cycles of farming. Pollan presents the book with a question in the beginning: "What should we have for dinner?" (Pollan 1) This question posed a combination of p...
...d and left with little cultural influence of their ancestors (Hirschman 613). When the children inadvertently but naturally adapting to the world around them, such as Lahiri in Rhode Island, the two-part identity begins to raise an issue when she increasingly fits in more both the Indian and American culture. She explains she “felt an intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new”, in which she evidently doing well at both tasks (Lahiri 612). The expectations for her to maintain her Indian customs while also succeeding in learning in the American culture put her in a position in which she is “sandwiched between the country of [her] parents and the country of [her] birth”, stuck in limbo, unable to pick one identity over the other.
It is during her stay at the White Family Home that she tries to grapple with cultural identity. In this regard, the novel articulates that Lucy was optimistic of living behind her cultural identity from her West Indies background; however, with time, Lucy generates nostalgic memories of her homeland. This portrays the hegemonic ideology of cultural identity. For example, she begins to remember the foods that she consumed while back home. Additionally, the cultural representation of cheating in marriage is replicated in Lucy’s new-found home.
MaxField Mary. “Food as Thought Resisting Moralization of Eating”. They Say I Say with Readings 3rd. Eds. Gerald Graff,Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. New York: W.W Norton and Company, Inc, 2016 442-447 Print.
Geeta Kothari’s “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” shares a personal story of a young woman’s efforts to find her identity as she grows up in a culture different than her parents. Kothari retells memories from her childhood in India, as well as her experiences as an American student. Kothari uses food as a representation of culture, and she struggles to appreciate her parent’s culture, often wishing that she was like the American children. Kothari’s tone changes as she comes to realize the importance of maintaining connections to her Indian culture. Originally published in a Kenyon College magazine, Kothari’s main audience was originally student based, and she aimed to give her young readers a new perspective to diversity. Through the
In Lavanya Ramanathan’s Washington Post article published in 2015 titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’”, she discusses about people’s preconceptions on the type of food that should be labelled ethnic. Ashlie Stevens also touched on a similar topic in her Guardian article published in 2015 titled “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes culture”. She talks about how people assume that just by eating food from a certain culture, they are able relate to the culture as a whole. Both authors acknowledge the importance of appreciating authentic cuisines, but takes different approaches to convince the audience. Both authors establish credibility by using a wide range of substantiated evidences. While,
Planck, Nina. "I Am Nursed on the Perfect Food." Real Food: What to Eat and Why. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2007. 39-44. Print.
To start off, a key point that ended up in a shift of the author’s beliefs upon her culture was demonstrated in the quote, “On Christmas Eve I saw that my mother had outdone herself in creating a strange menu. She was pulling black veins out of the backs of fleshy prawns.The kitchen was littered with appalling mounds of raw food.” This quote is essential to the disrespectful tone of of the story. Amy is extremely condescending of her culture and seems embarrassed of her culture and its food.
The identity crisis that is spoken of in “If You Are What You Eat, What Am I?” concerns the changes from an Indian diet to an American diet and the way it makes her feel. For her food ended up being one of the most important parts of her own personal identity and was the source of distress for her as a child. As a child she wants to fit in with her friends at school by eating American foods and she has concerns as to whether she is really her parent’s daughter or not.
Harvey, Blatt. America’s Food: What You Don’t Know About What You Eat. 1st ed. Cambridge:
Arjuna gives up now, he will be full of shame, and a man who has given up
“What should we have for dinner?” (Pollan 1). Michael Pollan, in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals shows how omnivores, humans, are faced with a wide variety of food choices, therefore resulting in a dilemma. Pollan shows how with new technology and food advancement the choice has become harder because all these foods are available at all times of the year. Pollan portrays to his audience this problem by following food from the food chain, to industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves; from the source to a final meal and, lastly he critiques the American way of eating. Non-fiction books should meet certain criterions in order to be successful. In his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan is able to craft an ineffective piece of non-argumentative non-fiction due to a lack of a clear purpose stated at the outset of the book, as well as an inability to engage the reader in the book due to the over-excessive use of technical jargon as well as bombarding the reader with facts.