Are We What We Eat? Food and Identity in Late Twentieth-Century ...

(1983)by Hijuelos and Typical American (1991)by Jen, two novels that are set in postwar America and explore the relationship between the past and the present, as well as that between one’s descent and one’s ability to consent, in the process of identity formation. Whereas Hijuelos includes scenes of cooking and eating to demonstrate how an individual may be consumed by the memories of his or her cultural past, Jen depicts similar incidents to show how one can look toward his or her future in the United States; together, both authors suggest that in order to find contentment in the present, ethnic Americans should consent to cultural identities that honor the past but look toward the future.

In chapters 2 and 3, I examine characters who through imaginative or physical journeys attempt to reconnect to the cultures of their descent. In my analysis of De Rosa’s Paper Fish (1980) and Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate (1997), the focus of my second chapter, I discuss third-generation Americans²⁰ in postwar America who embark on imaginative journeys to their ancestral homelands as they prepare ethnic foods with their immigrant grandmothers. In my comparison of Alvarez’s novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991)and Pham’s memoir Catfish and Mandala (1999), the subject of my third chapter, I analyze first-generation Americans in post–Civil Rights America who try to reconnect to their ethnic roots by physically returning to their birth nations, where they engage in important acts of food consumption. In both chapters, the pairs of authors suggest the importance of constructing hybrid cultural identities and coalitional gender identities, which work to merge seemingly contradictory qualities into a unified whole.

In chapter 4, I discuss Ross’s novel Oreo (1974) and Jen’s novel Mona in the Promised Land (1996), whose female protagonists come of age during the late 1960s and early 1970s and successfully challenge essentialist definitions of race, ethnicity, and gender. As their female characters prepare and consume an assortment of ethnic and “American” dishes, Ross and Jen depict an America where individuals will embrace the cultural differences within society and, more specifically, within themselves. This chapter leads to my conclusion, in which I further consider the question that I ask in the title of this book: Are we what we eat?