Are We What We Eat? Food and Identity in Late Twentieth-Century American Ethnic Literature By William R. Dalessio

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

Chapter 1:

Eating Away at the Past and the Present

Read

ABOUT
- Data
- Description
- Reviews
- About Author
- Cover
RESEARCH
- Bookmarks
- Notes
FONT
- Font Size
  - x-small
  - small
  - medium
  - large
  - x-large
- Line Height
  - 1.00
  - 1.25
  - 1.50
  - 1.75
  - 2.00
- Letter Spacing
  - Default
  - 1 pixel
  - 2 pixels
  - 3 pixels
  - 4 pixels
DOWNLOAD
- Complete Edition
PAGE
- TOC
- Copyright
- Index

male, who—he believes—lives for the present, forgets about the past, and welcomes the possibility of a more exciting and fun future.

Alejo’s perceptions of America and, more specifically, of American masculinity are informed notby reality but by the Hollywood cowboys whom he, as “a little kid who want[s] adventures and to live a long, wild life,” sees “in a shoddy movie house in Cuba” (Hijuelos 171). As an adult, Alejo hopes to emulate the cinematic cowboy, whose “most outstanding” characteristic, according to David B. Davis, “above even honor, courage, and generosity, is the relaxed, calm attitude toward life. Though he lives intensely, he has a calm self-assurance, a knowledge that he can handle anything” (29). On the ship to America, Alejo, who “imitate[s] the Americans who wore Stetson hats” (Hijuelos 32), certainly displays this sense of confidence when he leaves “a rolled-up dollar bill under a plate, as a tip, after the morning refreshments were served” (32). However, although the movie cowboys do not “have much interest in the homes they left behind” (Davis 22), Alejo will be haunted by the memories of the home (and the homeland) that he left behind.

“Manful” Eating: Ralph’s Attempt to Forget the Past

Although Ralph hopes to exercise self-restraint, he eventually succumbs to temptation by eating and drinking excessively in the United States. When Ralph arrives in New York City, he is initially both “impressed” and intimidated by his unfamiliar surroundings, especially the “cafeterias—eating factories, these seemed to him, most advanced and efficient, especially the Automats with their machines lit bright as a stage” (American 8). Perhaps these communal eateries remind Ralph of his home in China, where extended families ate and lived together “in compounds; a splintering of the family was called dividing the kitchen, and often meant that, literally. A brick wall would be put up—a labor” (226–227).⁴ Because of this, when Ralph first moves to a New York rooming house, he is “glad he still cooked with everyone else; at least he saw people” (29). As Ralph cooks Chinese food in the boarding house’s communal kitchen, both the content of the food and the context of its