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

patriarchies—both ethnic and “American”—define as masculine. Because of this, a preparer’s kitchen, according to Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran, may function as a “room of one’s own” and thus “the locale for female authority” (3). This space may allow the preparer to subvert patriarchal authority when, as Arlene Avakian notes, the cooking done in this space “becomes a vehicle for artistic expression, a source for sensual pleasure, an opportunity for resistance and even power” (6). The literature in this analysis includes female food preparers, such as Louise Clark in Fran Ross’s novel Oreo, whose culinary acts allow them to express their creativity and assert their independence. Furthermore, by preparing edible signifying units of ethnicity in American culture, some women, including the grandmothers in Paper Fish and Black Dog of Fate, act as cultural harbingers, connecting themselves and the families for whom they prepare food to the cultures of their descent; thus, their kitchens also become spaces for “the preservation of ethnic and religious identities” (Heller and Moran 3). In this context, the traditionally feminine act of food preparation becomes a subversive act of resistance that facilitates the preservation of ethnicity in mainstream America, a place often hostile to ethnic Otherness.

Significantly, the literature also demonstrates that a male food preparer, such as the narrator of Balakian’s memoir, gains a greater understanding of his mother culture—and therefore a sense of completion and fulfillment in mainstream American culture—as he prepares ethnic foods. It is important, though, that unlike most “proper” women, who must perform this culinary task on a daily basis, most men may choose to prepare food on their own terms; unlike their female counterparts, male preparers do not become burdened by this requirement of traditional femininity. The literature also suggests that in order to gain a sense of contentment or personal fulfillment, a male should not act exclusively as a self-indulgent food consumer, just as a female should not act solely as a self-sacrificing food preparer. Instead, an individual should construct what Butler would call a coalitional gender identity that, like a hybrid cultural identity, would satisfy his or her physical and emotional hungers.