Recipes for the Immigrant Experience. Food Descriptions in Five Ethnic American Novels

Download or read book Recipes for the Immigrant Experience. Food Descriptions in Five Ethnic American Novels written by Erlin Theunynck and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of food and foodways for people in general cannot be contested. This is one of the reasons why several authors of ethnic American literature have used descriptions of food and foodways abundantly in their novels. Female authors like Cristina Garcia, Jhuma Lahiri, Brenda Jackson, Monique Truong and Amy Tan have all written novels that use food descriptions to portray specifics about the ethnic experience in the United States. The food descriptions are not only interesting because of their exotic dimension, but more importantly because of their symbolical meaning. What can be said about these descriptions is that they form a sort of recipe for the immigrant experience. The universal language of food proves to be the language of choice for these authors who want open a window to the ethnic experience.