Introduction: Food in Multi-Ethnic Literatures

[...]recently, there had been little work done on the subject of food and American culture. According to Phyllis Williams, a social worker and author of South Italian Folkways in Europe and America: A Handbook for Social Workers, Visiting Nurses, School Teachers, and Physicians (1938): such American...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Melus 2007-12, Vol.32 (4), p.5-10
Main Authors: Gardaphé, Fred L., Xu, Wenying
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Agricultural production
American culture
Arab Americans
Capitalism
Cultural identity
Essays
Ethnicity
Home economics
Immigration
Jamaican literature
Lahiri, Jhumpa
Novels
Politics
Santiago, Esmeralda
Visiting nurses
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:[...]recently, there had been little work done on the subject of food and American culture. According to Phyllis Williams, a social worker and author of South Italian Folkways in Europe and America: A Handbook for Social Workers, Visiting Nurses, School Teachers, and Physicians (1938): such American staples as cow's milk were considered poison: From African American slave laborers on southern plantations, to Filipino and Hispanic migrant farmers, to Chinese and Japanese workers in the salmon industry in Alaska, to ethnic restaurants all over the country, ethnic Americans have fed and built this nation. Focusing on Caribbean women writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, M. Nourbese Philip, Dionne Brand, Marcia Douglas, and Beryl Gilroy, Houston identifies the Caribbean practice "making do"-a creative way of using seemingly useless food stuff-as an important philosophy and practice of women authors in claiming positive identities, given scarce cultural, economic, and literary resources. [...]making do" as a philosophy presents challenges to both agricultural production in postcolonial areas and postcolonial literary production.
ISSN:0163-755X
1946-3170
DOI:10.1093/melus/32.4.5