Analysis Of Picky Eater By Julia Alvarez

Picky Eater centers the readers attention in the nutritious side of Julia Alvarez’s life while growing up. During her flashback, she reveals how eating was extremely strict in her family, especially by her mother, back in the Dominican Republic where she spent some of her childhood. “Eating en la calle was strictly forbidden” in which her family believed it was dangerous and may get them sick if they ate outside (144). In fact, she was very picky with her food, as well as her sisters, and would get punished by drinking a mixture of their food if they didn’t eat it, called “engrudo” (144). Otherwise, they would stay in their rooms until their father came home and gave them vitamin shots. She explains that when she was young she didn’t eat much

and her mother worried about her health.
Eventually, Alvarez came to the U.S. with her family and by then they didn’t have time to eat together and had to eat junk food. Later, Alvarez and her sisters were sent to boarding school, followed by college where she learned about vegetarianism. Throughout her 20’s and 30’s, eating cheese and crackers or salad was all she had, until she got married to a doctor who enjoyed making food. Alvarez helped her husband make dinner and became in charge of making dessert. In time, she learned a few things about meals and then began making recipes. After all, Alvarez realized that she “was one of those adults at the table of a family that was obviously bound together, not at the hip, but the belly.” (149).
In the long run, food connects across cultures and Alvarez concludes how she “discovered the wonderful pleasure of transforming a pile of ingredients into a recipe that nurtured and sometimes delighted the people I love.” (149).