Consuming Fictional Literature Surrounding Food, Culture, and Well-Being

Over the past ten weeks I have consumed multiple genres of food fiction and its representation of and influences on culture, family and community, as well as the relationship between food and pleasure and reading and pleasure. This ILC tied up the work I have done with Sarah Williams this year by allowing me to apply and experience some of the ideals around digital reading and physical reading in context, and continue exploring my own relationship to food, pleasure, and social emotional well-being. This ILC was also a part of my personal goals surrounding reading and bringing enjoyment back to my academics, and I used that for a multi-dimensional comparison of healing from food traumas versus academic traumas which I presented to Sarah Williams first and second year students in my week 10 presentation. 

 Over the course of this ILC I read seven novels with genres including general fiction, historical fiction, magical realism, horror and dystopian fiction, and YA fiction. As well as annotating for and reflecting on the books representation of food and cooking and it’s relationship to the plot and characters, I also evaluated my learning process throughout the quarter, noting where it changed and where I experienced pleasure and held value. I am overall very pleased with the results of this project, I have developed a new level of self awareness in education, as well as exposed myself to a variety of literature that presents food and cooking in drastically different scenarios and a wide variety of consequences. It has left me questioning the historical and psychological reasoning behind human healing practices, and how cultural philosophy impacts food and policy. I hope to continue this kind of work for the rest of my time at Evergreen, and has convinced me to look further into grad school and writing curriculum.  

My book this week was recommended by a mentor from high school, who after hearing how much I had enjoyed The Vegetarian by Han Kang, told me that this absolutely had to be my next read. It wasn’t what I had planned on as my last read but I found it at Last Words Book and Press in downtown Olympia after a failed search for several other books, and for the low price of $2.50, I concluded it was probably fate. I have previously read two other books by Margret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale and The Testaments, which are her more well-known works due to their topicality and TV adaptations, and Atwood herself is in my eyes one of the authors that will define this time period.

The blurb is incredibly short with just four full sentences, but I can understand why it may have been recommended to follow The Vegetarian. The main character is finding herself unable to eat following her engagement and feels like she herself is being consumed. But that is really all we get for the description, giving me very little to work with as far as guiding questions in the readings. Knowing that her eating patterns change following her engagement, I will look for ways her relationship with her fiance may mirror her relationship with food, as well as the way those around her respond to her loss of appetite. I will also look at the way her relationship with her fiance may make her feel “consumed” and how food and identity overlap thereafter.

I also want to identify some key questions surrounding my learning process this quarter and how food and pleasure and reading and pleasure have cooked together in this ILC. I want to use these questions not just for this weeks and next weeks reflections, but also to guide my final presentation and self-evaluation. But before that I want to add a note about my learning disabilities and how they have impacted these last few quarters, and what has come into play over the last 8 weeks. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 13, and finally at 21 I have been prescribed some ADHD meds that actually help me. Realizing the impact my ADHD has had on my college career after just a few days on these meds has really given me a new perspective on pleasure in academics, and makes me realize how many of these problems could have been avoided if I had been presented with ADHD meds well the first time. I pushed back against my meds when I was younger because I didn’t have a say in starting them, and much like introducing a child to a new food, after being pushed and pushed and pushed I began to detest the idea of medication altogether. Side by side I am healing my relationship with both food and academics, but more and more I can identify places where neuro-divergent people are more likely to experience struggles around either, and how many ways the world is not set up for us.

As I read I want to make notes of what invokes feelings of pleasure, and where in my reading and reflections I experience the most pleasure. I want to identify ways in which my reading patterns and pleasure from reading have changed over the quarter and how it parallels my relationship with food.

Post Reading Reflection

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood follows Marian, a woman in her mid-twenties who finds herself losing her appetite following her engagement. Throughout the book Marian interacts with multiple characters that present different ideas of what her identity should look like, with a heavy focus on her “feminine identity”. Her long-time friend Clara seems to be less and less of herself as she prepares for her third child while internally despising the loss of her freedom, her roommate Ainsley is determined to have a child without a father, claiming her feminine duty was to have a child but that a husband was not necessary. Then there is her fiance Peter, who seems sweet but cares more for the idea of a wife than a family than he seems to care about Marian herself. Following their engagement, the book shifts from the first to the third person, a metaphor for Marians’ own loss of identity and disconnection from the story. She truly notices her change in appetite at dinner with Peter, watching him devour his steak puts her off the rest of her meal as she becomes disgusted with the idea of meat.

Her eating patterns change throughout the book as food coincides with negative emotions and stories. After a story of a live chicken in a friend’s eggshell, she won’t eat eggs, and one by one foods are crossed off her list until all she is consuming is milk and vitamins. Meanwhile she has met a graduate student named Duncan, who is incredibly honest often to the point of unkindness. Despite her engagement to Peter she is quickly attracted to Duncan, and he seems to counterbalance the many voices trying to influence her identity as he is wholeheartedly invested in the present moment and his own enjoyment of it, seeming unbothered by any consequences that could follow Marian.

The switch in perspective the book is written in and her loss of appetite go hand in hand when parallelling her relationship with Peter. As her fiance further smothers her image of her identity and ideas of her future she begins to lose touch with her feelings of personhood and soon ignores the needs of her body allowing it to deteriorate with her relationship with food. By the end of the book Marian is convinced that her fiance is trying to devour her, to destroy her. She bakes a cake of herself in a bikini and offers it to him to eat instead. He refuses it, quickly leaving and effectively ending the engagement. Her appetite returns and she hungrily eats the cake, with the final chapter switching back to first person.

The reading itself was a pleasant experience, as the quarter has progressed I have found myself falling back into wanting to avoid my reading, a little overwhelmed with academic dread, but once I start I always get the pleasure and satisfaction from reading that inspired this ILC. Pleasure itself is at the center of not just this ILC but has been a key theme in much of my past food studies work at Evergreen, playing a huge part in studying food and social-emotional well-being. The avoidance of something that brings one pleasure, such as reading or eating, is always going to connect back to some social-emotional experience that applies some kind of fear or repulsion to the act that brings pleasure. Months ago I used a quote about an eggplant and the way we are introduced to new foods as a comparison to the way we treat food and social dieting as a whole. The idea behind the comparison was to examine the way that our initial and past experiences with food transfer over time and are also exaggerated in the health industry, as well as to question how much of that behavior is nature vs nurture. The eggplant metaphor fits in perfectly with pleasure and reading, as well as the way I used it in past quarters. Getting pleasure from reading is something that can be developed with similar positive means as trying new foods, as well as something that often begins to deteriorate in teenage years as it becomes mandatory for school, and more outside stressors are applied.

My own relationship with food is something I try to be very open about as I hope it will help me evaluate where I am and what I need as well as possibly help others who may feel similarly. Similarly, I have tried to be very open about my history with reading, academic trauma, and pleasure in learning. In doing this I have noticed that while I constantly allude that the healing process for both could be similar, I personally don’t practice what I preach, and approach them very differently. While I was excited for a chance to heal my relationship with reading, there is much more reluctance around my journey with eating. After thinking about it for a while I came to the conclusion that while healing my journey with reading was something that felt highly encouraged, I equated healing my relationship with food as gaining back the weight I lost over the last few years, something defiantly not societally encouraged. I do not have perfect insight on this yet but it makes me wonder what a society in which we celebrated achievements of food and self as much as grade awards and academia would be like?

I will be uploading a last reflection on food reading, and pleasure in the learning process as well as my final presentation and self-evaluation by the end of week 10!

As I have progressed through my ILC I have struggled to find the best way to go about these posts. My pre-thoughts often contradict what I want the message of my final post to convey and sometimes feel boring to write, but also the comparisons and pre-notions are often interesting when evaluating my learning process. Sometimes my posts look closer to book reports than reflections, but sometimes I feel my reader is missing crucial detail when I leave things out. I have come to the conclusion that ten weeks is never going to be enough to perfect a learning process, and while I have had months to adjust to my regular ILC format, I recognize the same instability and unsureness I felt when I started my Hypothes.is centric ILC’s in Winter 2022. I also think that I overestimated myself by deciding to do a book a week, I am definitely putting in more hours than I would have preferred for four credits, and still have a final presentation to make. For this reason, I will be reading one book for week seven, and one book for weeks eight and nine combined, with the end of week nine being preparation for my presentation, and week ten being focused on my final eval and reflections. I think my final presentation will be on the changing of my learning process, how to evaluate how you’re feeling about academia itself, and how to adjust your expectations and actions based on that.

I have decided for my last two books I will convey the things I know about the book from the blurb or people having recommended the book, as well as questions I may ask or themes or ideas I am looking for. These may have entirely changed by the time I do my post-reading reflection, but I think it will be beneficial to for sure have themes and questions to be looking for even if they change.

My copy of Cinnamon and Gunpowder doesn’t have a cover, but I found the official blurb available on Goodreads.com. The description promises “A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship”, and follows a chef kidnapped by a pirate who demands meals in exchange for his life. The blurb also alludes to a pressure put on the pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot that leads her to overwork her crew and how that changes relationships on the ship. I am going to be looking specifically for how food and emotion interact in parallel to the emotions of Chef Owen Wedgwood and his captor. While Owen seems like he may be the main character, I have a suspicion that because the relationship between the pirate and the chef is also that of a captor and her captive, an element of fear will always be at the edge of their interactions, at least until the power balance shifts. There is also the big question of why a hunted pirate would kidnap a chef, or let him live, and the answer lies clearly in the food. Therefore, I will also be looking at how food is used as a comfort for both the chef and the pirate in their peculiar circumstances.

Post-reading

Cinnamon and Gunpowder lived up to its promise of gripping adventure and seaborn romance, with the addition of bringing to light many issues of the past and present as told through a pirate with a cause. After the pirate Hannah Mabbot and her crew aboard the Rose kill Chef Owen Wedgwoods’ long-time employer, Ramsey, she sits at his table and eats the meal prepared for him by Owen. This leads her to take Owen aboard her ship, offering him a deal that he cooks every Sunday for her “the finest supper”, in exchange for his life. She specifies “You will neither repeat a dish nor serve foods that are in the slightest degree mundane” all of which must be done from a pirate ships provisions. Owen originally casts it off as impossible, but each Sunday he manages to prepare a meal akin to something he prepared in his high-status job for a wealthy merchant. All of this is documented in a makeshift journal Owen keeps hidden, at first to track time and document the pirates’ times, and then later seemingly for his own sanity.

The role of food and cooking as comfort played a huge role, but I think that separating the cooking and comfort from the food and comfort provides a really good insight into the two main characters. Hannah Mabbot kidnaps a stranger because she seeks the comfort he can provide in his cooking, though she at first claims it is about maintaining stature over her crew she makes it a weekly event for herself and Owen, clearly in need of both the comfort of the meal and his company. She allows Owen to question her more than most of her own crew over these dinners, seemingly becoming more vulnerable under the influence of good food. Mabbot also longs for intelligent conversations, missing some of the influences of her upbringing, and delights in engaging in topics of food as intelligent conversation. It is not until the end of the book that we see much willingness from Owen to partake in these meals, but once the event is started he cannot help himself, he too misses the world of elegant conversation.

Owen, used to being a renowned chef for an incredibly wealthy businessman, adjusts poorly to life on a pirate ship. Though resistant to this ritual for a good portion of the book, he pours his heart into his meals even after he no longer fears for his life at the hands of the captain, stating “If I failed in my duties, would my life really be forfeit? Yet I find myself continuing the pursuit of flavor for the sake of my own sanity. It calms my soul.” (p.212). Despite his strong distaste for the captain and what she stands for (until about page 266), he goes to great lengths to acquire ingredients and create multiple course meals that remind him of those he made for his former employer.

Looking at food and emotion, Owen repeatedly uses food to offer an apology or raise morale. On one particular occasion, the nightwatchman has been flogged in punishment for Owen’s escape attempt. He offers the crewman crepes as an apology, and while nothing is said about the prior events it is apparent how much this act of sitting and eating with the crew changes the dynamic. There is always a separation between Owen and the rest of the crew, but as Mabbot acts more irrationally the comfort that Owen can provide to the chef in both his food and his company becomes more of a commodity

This brings me to the theme of food and togetherness which is what this novel really embodies. Hannah Mabbot, searching for her son and soon in love with her captive chef, longs for the unique togetherness that the meals with Owen provide. Owen Wedgwood, grieving his wife, child, and old life, seeks togetherness wherever he can find it aboard the Rose, using food as a tool to earn the trust of his crewmates and captain. Individually the crew were incredibly complex and even those who seemed to contribute little to the main plotline were written in such a way to demonstrate their motivations throughout the whole novel rather than in long explanations. While it would be a stretch to say Owen ever became friends with the crew, they offer back some form of acceptance in the form of sitting together to eat.

Food and togetherness can be a difficult subject for many people like myself with disordered eating habits, often it triggers the idea of being closely observed or monitored while eating. Throughout my recovery my feelings on eating around other people have changed almost with the season, but it’s more complex than a yes or a no. Having my own kitchen table where I could serve my loved ones meals has been a dream of mine since high school, I used to refer to it as my “number 1 domestic want”. And while my desire to bring people together with my food never goes away, I can find it overshadowed by fear of judgment and over-awareness of my body. In Cinnamon and Gunpowder, Owen must use food and togetherness as a tactic to ensure his survival while actively fearing for his life dependent on the quality of his meals. While he is not a protagonist you can fully root for due to some of his nasty 1800s Church of England beliefs, and while I am not being held captive by a pirate, I can relate to the love/fear cycle that he experiences around his cooking and the meals served both to the Captain and the crew.

In my surrounding research I was curious to read reviews that spoke to Owen’s character, as I wasn’t sure how widely held my sentiment would be. I was honestly disappointed to not find as much published about this book as I would have liked, but while I didn’t find anything speaking to Owen’s morals, I really appreciated this NPR article that described him as “… a priest of sorts, practicing his faith in the kitchen, where he has developed a sort theology of food.” (Petra Mayer NPR, 2013)

As far as historical accuracy, this book is almost entirely a work of fiction. Most of the places and events outside of countries seem to be a work of fiction, but that is not surprising as there is also an element of almost steampunk worked into one of the main antagonists. But unfortunately, the Pendleton company was not founded until 1863, and as far as I know, have never tangled with pirates or opium.

I liked this layout of early questioning from the blurb, post-reading reflections, and then research notes, I think it will be a good way to close out my last book. I have a few options for my last book, it will honestly be dependent on which ones I can get a copy of by the beginning of week 8!

“I wonder what retrieved your husband’s memory. Was it the taste of the saffron or its scent? And how did the memory return to him? Did it crawl cautiously out of the past, or arrive in one savory burst?” (Fay pg.26)

After my mid-quarter eval meeting I am making a few changes to the way I wrote my posts. I will be writing much less explaining the plot of the book, and instead highlighting the food and effect examples and discussing my learning process in relation to food and pleasure, and reading and pleasure. This weeks book was Love and Saffron by Kim Fay. I found this book on this Penguin Random House recommendation list, and I was curious to read a book partially set in the PNW. It was written in 2022, but takes place between October 1st 1962, and August 6th 1966.

The story follows two women, Imogen Fortier, a food journalist and secretary living in North Seattle, and Joan Bergstrom, a women’s pages staff writer at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and later, a food journalist and cookbook writer. The book starts with a fan letter sent from Joan to Imogen, and a deep friendship forms out of changing recipes and ingredients via the mail. Most of the book is told via the letters sent between the two women but the vulnerability expressed in these letters is more than enough to get a deep understanding of the characters, there is a deep feeling of desperation underlying each woman’s need for a confidant. Throughout the book these women share dinner recommendations and new ingredients that alter their life events and ways of thinking, as well as acknowledging the limitations that came with sourcing ingredients in the 1960’s and the circumstances of their time.

I want to highlight a particular example of food and effect, the weight of food in relationships, and make a couple of connections to this idea I’m working with of food and pleasure and reading and pleasure. This example involves the titular ingredient, Saffron. Imogen is drawn out of her room by the smell of her husband cooking her an omelet with glazed butter, herbes de Provence, and saffron sent to her in Joans first letter. But in her communication with Joan she does not find the taste of the omelet to be the most extraordinary part of the meal. For the first time, Imogens husband spoke to her about his experience at war, recalling the memory of learning to make omelets in an abandoned farmhouse. Imogen is suprised that the first reference to his time in the military is accompanied by a smile she describes as entirely new to her. I think here, the author is trying to convey that Francis, while reserved about his time at war, wants to be vulnerable and share with his wife, and he demonstrates that through the telling of this story, and the tricky procurement of the herbes de Provence. I think it also demonstrates a much more primal message, that emotional vulnerability can be eased simply with the comfort of a food that’s pleasurable to chew and swallow.

When I am evaluating my learning process, this is really good thinking to apply. As I am exploring pleasure through reading and pleasure through food, I am attempting to heal my relationship with academics and reading in general, while also working on my own relationship with food. I read twenty books in three months at the beginning of 2023 after not reading a book by choice since early high school, all fiction that I chose and read at my own pace, all of which I enjoyed and digested. The simple comfort of reading a book I enjoyed reinstated the love of reading I had l had lost so many years ago and made it easy to heal that relationship. One of the main goals in writing this ILC was to bring that pleasure into my academics to try and find joy in learning again, similar to the way Francis uses the joy he finds in cooking that omelet to begin to find joy in remembering his past.

This book also helped me reflect a lot on my own relationship, not just with food but also with cooking and my kitchen. I can trace back my eating disorder to specific foods made growing up (among other factors) all of which I found unpleasant before the disordered eating presented itself. I started cooking regularly a little under a year ago and the agency over what I eat has been absolutely life-changing. While there is still a struggle to allow myself to eat them, the foods that I find pleasurable are the most important in my recovery. Again, this can be compared to healing my relationship with reading, bringing pleasure to the front of our lives to heal in the areas we hurt.

Next week I am going to read Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown. I’m working on finalizing what my week 10 presentation will be about, but I am hoping to have a solid focus on this pleasure in food and pleasure in reading idea, and highlight the ways in which an ILC can be used to fight academic burnout. I have also written the first draft of my Summer 23 ILC!

The main goal of my Spring 2023 ILC was to explore different examples of food being used as key themes or messaging in fictional literature. I was curious to see how we are exposed to ideas of food, or food as a metaphor when we are least expecting it and therefore most susceptible to this kind of messaging. This was also an attempt to work on improving my own attention span, and decreasing my screen time as it has been irritating my eyes. While I did decide to use hypothes.is for this project, it is much more of a background tool for when I am researching the context or history of a book.  

As of now I have read four books. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, The Vegetarian by Han Kang, Tender Is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica, and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Each one has been unique in the way it has worked food into it’s key moments, and each left me with a plethora of research ideas or personal questions for myself or the author. Something I have noticed in how veery book has had themes surrounding food and family, what it means to sit and eat a meal with your loved ones, and the way our food and eating habits are so directly influenced by our culture and upbringing. 

While I had a few issues of time management in weeks three and four, I am very happy with where I am in my ILC up to this point. My biggest critique of myself is that I haven’t been including enough of my research in my WordPress posts. The reading, writing, and background research required is easily filling my ten hour requirement, and this project is leaving me feeling fulfilled and helping me return the feeling of joy back to my schoolwork.  

This week I read Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquirel. It follows our main character, Tita, and her life over many years as she combats struggles of family and love with rebellion through food. This book is divided into twelve chapters, each representing a month of the year although the book passes many years throughout. Each chapter is entitled with a month and a family recipie, and the back of the chapter title page will list the ingredients. Each chapter begins with PREPERATION: and weaves the instructions to make each recipe into the chapter, so the whole book simulates a cookbook, and is revealed to be parts of a cookbook left behind by Tita following her death. The book is set in Mexico near the Mexico-United States border during the time of the Mexico Revolutionary War, and incorporates many elements of magical realism.

The magical realism element of this book is one of the most important, with our main character seemingly being able to influence the emotions of those around her through her food. Her ability to convey her own feelings and desires is Titas main form of resistance for much of the book, as for much of her life she is held hostage by her mothers desire to keep her as a caretaker. I first want to highlight a series of events surrounding this ability and it’s impacts on her family.

The first time Tita escapes her house, it is in the form of rescue. Under the guise of taking her to a mental asylum, a local doctor who goes on to become her fiance rescues her from her mothers house. Tita had become incredibly distressed following the news of the death of her young nephew whom she had a maternal connection with. He had been the child of her sister and her childhood sweetheart, who had married after her mother had denied Pedro her hand. Titas family tradition dictates that the youngest daughter will never marry, and will be the mothers caretaker in her old age. In revenge for having tried to get married and having such a strong connection with both Pedro and her nephew, her mother sends Pedro, her sister, and her nephew to live in the United States. Upon receiving the news Tita yells back at her mother about her mistreatment and takes refuge in the dovecote. The next morning she was found, incredibly out of it, with a dead dove in her hands, still trying to feed it. Being known for feeding the doves, the family determines that she had fed it over and over in her state and it had died of indigestion. It’s easy to miss but I believe this dove to be the first of three creatures killed via Titas powers.

The second victim is her abusive mother. After her escape, her mother gets sick and Tita moves back to care for her, as her oldest sister is in America and her second eldest had been disowned. Despite being known around the village as being the best cook, her mother detects a bitterness in everything Tita cooks and claimed that her daughter was attempting to poison her. This bitterness is likely the translation of Titas bitterness at being the daughter taking care of their mother, and the awful treatment she still receives from her. Despite her precaution to have Tita eat everything prepared for her first, her mother dies within days. Tita feels free for the first time, until she is reunited with Pedro, and her sister Rosaura, pregnant with another child.

The final victim is Rosaura. Many years after the death of their mother, when Rosauras daughter is intending to marry her sweetheart. It is revealed that at some point in time, a treaty of sorts was reached between Rosaura, Pedro, and Tita. Rosaura, more concerned with her daughter turning out to be the perfect caretaker and social figure, agreed to not come between Pedro and Tita behind closed doors. Within this deal was the stipulation that Tita educate her within the family, and within the family traditions. Tita takes advantage of this to teach Esperanza to be more of a free thinker and advocate for herself and even convinces her sister to allow her to go to a school when she is older. It is here that she meets her sweetheart. I really enjoyed the quote “When Esperanza told Tita that when she felt Alex’s eyes on her body, she felt like dough being plunged into boiling oil, Tita knew that Alex and Esperanza would be bound together forever.” (pg.241) Her sister deeply opposes their marriage, wanting Esperanza to follow the family tradition. Three days after the most violent argument between the family about the subject Rosaura died of digestive issues. The timing of her death, the manner in which it occurs, and the all too vague description of her illness match her up to be the third death.

This book really demonstrates the connection between food and social-emotional well-being, which is something I studied really heavily last quarter. Throughout the book Tita is expressing her emotions through food, as she is allowed to nowhere else. The kitchen becomes her safe haven at a young age, and she regularly seeks comfort in it’s company. I particularly enjoyed a scene in which she sang to her beans to make them cook faster, and many other small moments of magical realism that really brought to the front the elements of culture and family which were also huge. The recipes are all Mexican family recipes that represent the mental state of context in which the main character is currently existing, and there is a certain level of irony that this act of labor she is assigned to after a ranch employee dies, she takes not only comfort but also revenge in her position. When Tita is trapped in a house where she feels she is slowly going mad from the pain, she twists these recipes that are so personal to the family into her own healing and vengeance.

There is a sister novel similar to this that is supposed to help you understand Tita more, I’m working on getting it for next week!

This week I am reading Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. This book is horrifically disturbing and I want to warn anyone thinking of reading this book to not only check my trigger warning but also look online for a more extensive list that covers the whole book. I have been interested in learning more about cannibalism and vampiric eating since my first quarter doing food studies and this book is an imaginative look at what the author sees as one of our potential futures.

This book was published in 2017 in Spanish, but since has been translated into 23 languages. This book’s main plot feels interwoven between this slow progression of the main characters life, and so instead of a summary as I’ve been doing I’m choosing to spend more time talking about the world-building and real-life connections than I will be discussing the plot as I have in prior weeks.

This book takes place in a world in which all animals have become carriers of a disease deadly to humans. While the book mainly focuses on the “transition” as it pertains to the meat industry, they have also outlawed all household pets, put down all livestock, and most people won’t go outside without an umbrella of fear of birds. The book follows the main character, Marcos, who works in a high-up position in a slaughterhouse that sells “special meat”, the term they use as referring to humans bred as livestock is heavily frowned upon. We meet Marcos a while into the “transition”, the time period in which selling “heads” (people) has been fully phased in and legalized, but despite his job Marcos is a vegetarian. He lives dissociated from his reality, burdened by the moral implications of his work as well as the recent death of his child and separation from his wife. Marcos often seems quite indifferent to his surroundings, and while he does not eat this “special meat” even coming into conflict over his sisters ownership of a “house head” which I will mention later, he doesn’t have an opposition strong enough to remove himself, or perhaps he is too far gone from the trauma of the last few years to have the energy to care. He still views these people as less than human, you can tell from the language choice that he carries the same biases as those around him. It leaves me to wonder how many others in Bazterrica’s world may feel the same?

The book highlights that the speed in which the world made the transition left open opportunities for target violence. The legislation passed so quickly that the treatment of the “special meat” was not a concern, and since it began minority groups, immigrant populations, and women have been heavily targeted for their bodies. In the present day we are seeing more and more attacks on the sovereignty over ones own body, especially over those with the ability to get pregnant. In “Tender Is the Flesh”, heads who are born in captivity are referred to as “First Generation Pure” or FPG’s, and so there is an increasing attack on women who can get pregnant to be taken to facilities. While having sex with a “head” is illegal as they cannot consent, it is clear that the true motivation is the preservation of the meat and not the person.

Throughout the book we learn much about how this world compares to our present day. “Heads” are often bred in captivity, kept in inhumane conditions, and have their vocal cords removed to prevent screaming before slaughter. Marcus oversees a complex system before slaughter to keep them calm and not ruin the meat, as well as dealing with multiple other parties involved in this new meat industry, which are uncannily similar to those we know of today.

“House Heads” are kept in specially built rooms by the highly wealthy, still alive to be served a la carte. “Head Hunting” is another activity for the wealthy, where the rich can hunt people bred in captivity. Marcus visits the breeding center where they buy the “heads” with specific instructions not only for the meat but for their skins, as a new market of human leather goods has picked up. It is on one of these trips that we meet the main conflict of the book. Marcus complains to the breeding plant that his last order was botched, as the tanners have very specific orders. In an attempt to make it up to him, he is delivered a high-quality FPG, a young woman delivered directly to his house. It is here we start to see Marcus struggle internally with his own actions, whereas before he was able to disassociate away from his work, it is now in his barn.

He leaves her tied in the barn as he goes to work the next day, as well as to visit his father in the nursing home. We learn a little more about the bleakness of this new world and the ways in which cannibalism has tainted every industry, including nursing homes. This section really drives home what I believe to be one of the key themes of this book, that corporate greed has driven our food industry to the point of destroying each other. It seems that every person is complicit in some kind of horror of this new era, whether or not they directly work for a plant, as Marcus’s father fears his body will be sold by a nurse on the black market. We also learned about his sister Marisa in this time, they are not estranged but defiantly distant, his sister does not contribute anything to her fathers care and seems to have no moral issues with the “transition”.

Marcus is conflicted about the woman in his barn, but after seeing his family he decides bring her inside and clean her up. While the writing feel tender and gentle, you never really escape the feeling that he really sees her as more of a pet than a person. She has no vocal chords and has been kept in isolation her whole life, and is therefore clearly delayed in her mental development, but instead of acting like a caretaker or a parent, he still very clearly sees her as a fragile possession. While there are no overtly sexual comments or observations, the tone of the narrator feels as though he’s holding back a more feral or predatory feeling. The first section concludes with “What he wants to do is prohibited. But he does it anyway”.

The first chapters of the second section reveal a lot of information very quickly. Firstly, he has named the woman Jasime after the scent he described smelling on her when he first washed her. This in itself is a rebellion as personifying your “house head” goes against the whole system of “special meat”, but he has also brought her to live in his sons old nursery, which directly violates the law. Having smashed his sons crib after her arrival, this feels like a very gross way of demonstrating how he feels about this woman. She is demonstrated to have the mentality of a young child, and he leaves her locked in her room when he goes out of fear of her hurting herself. It really feels as though Marcos is trying to fill the void of his wife and child AND justify his daily work through this woman.

This becomes even more apparent when it is revealed that Jasmine is eight months pregnant with Marcus’s child. Not only is this illegal, but it is just plain wrong on a basic moral level. Even the government as corrupt as it has become (and with their ulterior motives), recognizes her as unable to consent.

The chapters in the second half of the book feature the death of Marcus’s father, and the subsequent fallout at his memorial lunch when Marcus discovers his sister has a house head. This should be a moment of mental clarity for Marcus, where he is horrified by his sisters use of another humans body, yet returns home to Jasmine. When she goes into labor, he panics and calls his wife who is revealed to be an nurse. While she is ultimately dismayed at the scene, she delivers the baby boy safely. Jasmine reaches her arms out for her child who is kept out of her reach, and Marcos tells his wife the child is theirs now. He wipes her face and helps her to her feet, before knocking her out and beginning to drag her to the barn for slaughter. His wife is upset, stating that she could have given him more children, but he closes the novel by saying “She had the human look of a domesticated animal”.

This book uses cannibalism to demonstrate the brutality, not only of the meat industry but of our food systems in general. It covers issues of face, class, and gender, and demonstrates how interconnected our food is to every other aspect of our life. It uses a protagonist who is impossible to root for, yet allows you to develop the tiniest amount of compassion by letting you feel the impossible exhaustion of such a traumatizing few years. Ultimately Marcos is a bad person who demonstrates his character over and over again through his actions, and his lack of empathy for others. But it also seems Bazterrica has presented us with a world in which every character is complicit in the potent brutality and lack of empathy between characters.

Bazterrica uses very clear comparisons between the current meat and dairy industry and this dystopian future, going into detail on the treatment of the “heads”, even including a scene that allows the reader to see the entire slaughter and harvesting process. And she’s not wrong that our current way of processing meat for slaughter is far from kind, most factory farms keep livestock in cruelly close confines, many chickens face chronic pains from enduring their own weight to meet industry demands. It is also an environmental disaster, with over half the country’s water going to grow food for livestock, and horrendous amounts of carbon emissions.

This book is wildly disturbing, and the ending is shocking and made me a little nauseous, but if you can stomach horror of this variety I highly recommend it. It allows you to ponder questions about yourself you might not want to, would you eat the “special meat” if everyone around you was? There was minimal talk about people fighting back against this movement, would I have if I had been so exhausted after years of deadly disease on top of personal trauma? It may also make you question your own diet, you may find your plate looking back at you.

TW: Rape, domestic violence, in-patient psychiatric care, attempted suicide, anorexia

This week I am going to read The Vegetarian by Han Kang. I read this book several months ago and it was actually the inspiration for this ILC. I wanted to reread it in full, this time looking at it through more of an academic lens. I am interested in how the novel will read when read with an intention other than pleasure, not that I don’t think it will be pleasurable because it is for school, but I think it will taste different on the second pass because I am looking for something this time. I am specifically looking for ways in which the main characters relationship with food affects her relationships with other people.

This novel follows Yeong-hye and her relationship with meat, eating, and family, following several gory dreams that lead her to become a vegetarian. The book is split in to three sections, each told from the perspective of someone close to Yeong-hye but none from her own point of view. My copy was 188 pages, published in 2015, and was translated from Korean. I’m going to be putting most of my focus on the first and third sections as they pertain mostly to food, but I will have a paragraph summary of the second section.

The first chapter “The Vegetarian” is told from the perspective of Yeong-hye’s husband Mr. Chong. He admits to having very little attraction to his wife, and even opens the book stating “Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.” Despite their marriage he seems cold and uncaring towards her, seeing her more as a homemaker than a partner or a wife. One morning he finds her standing in front of their refrigerator disposing of all their meat and talking of a dream she had. After her husband rushes after the house calling her crazy we get a glimpse into the dream, Yeong-hye pushing through a jungle of bamboo shoots strung with meat and running with blood.

Yeong-hye continues to suffer abuse from her husband as she becomes a vegetarian. While he is increasingly harsh to her, she becomes more and more reserved, sickly, and overall seems disassociated from her husband. He begins raping her as she refuses his sexual advances, belittling her with his coworkers and boss over dinners, and informing her family. Yeong-hye faces ridicule from her community and family, and begins to lose weight rapidly

It comes to a head at a family dinner with Yeong-hye’s family. Her husband asks a question about the spread created by Yeong-hye’s sister, prompting Yeong-hye’s mother and father to fly into a rage over her choice not to cook or eat meat. When she wont eat the offered octopus, her father hits her, and her brother and husband restrain her so they may force a bite into her mouth but cannot get it past her teeth. When she is able to free herself, she uses a nearby fruit knife to slit her wrists. She is admitted to the hospital as dreaded by her husband, and we learn later that two years after he serves her with divorce papers.

Already this first chapter is heavy with this idea of otherness in food. Fear and otherness are a huge concept when trying new foods, for children and adults, and heavily impact the chances of us enjoying a food. Our preconcieved ideas of what a taste and texture will do a lot to avoid or create inner conflict around a food we are trying for the first time, and the emotional response changes if we will like it or not. This idea of being vegetarian seems to outrage Yeong-hye’s family as much as it suddenly disgusts her, and while Yeong-hye is not forcing her family not to cook or eat meat, they are adamant that she must give up being a vegetarian and prescribe to their diet. Her family blames the vegetarian diet for her weightloss and her sickley appreance, meanwhile it’s more than likely that the stress of this dream and the lack of support from her husband and family is causing the weightloss from mental distress. No one cares to look further than her actions, and therefore they miss her entire motivation which was to be in less emotional anguish.

The second section “The Mongolian Mark” is told from the perspective of Yeong-hye’s brother in law. He has a deep obsession with an image of naked men and women with flowers painted on their backs, but finds the show to be to loudly sexual. He begins an obsession with the idea of a pornographic film of a man and a woman covered in painted flowers. He remembers that Yeong-hye has a Mongolian Mark on her buttock and sketches an image of a man and a woman (himself and Yeong-hye) painted in flowers and starts searching for ways to make his idea real.

After a cryptic phone convocation he drives to her apartment where he enters her unlocked apartment without knocking and finds her naked. She seems unbothered by it, and expresses how much she enjoys nudity when she is alone. She seems indifferent to his idea but he is able to collect her at the train station and take her to his studio soon after, where he paints her with flowers and photographs her. Something I found interesting was that while he had been filled with lust for her and her Mongolian Mark for most of the chapter, upon seeing it he finds it less sexual than he remembered, referring to it as “vegetative”. He later convinces a fellow artist, J, to join the shoot, painting him with flowers too and having him lay with Yeong-hye for slow imitated intercourse while her brother-in-law films. However, J is clearly much more uncomfortable with this from the start, and backs out quickly when asked to actually have intercourse with Yeong-hye which was not a part of the original proposal. Yeong-hye expresses that she would have done it, if not for the man but for the flowers painted on his body.

The brother-in-law quickly drives to an ex and begs her to paint flowers from his sketches onto his body, and returns to Yeong-hye where he finally gets to film his porno. Mid-way, when she begins to cry and ask him to stop, he turns the camcorder off and continues. Beore sleeping Yeong-hye asks if this would make her dreams stop. When brother-in-law wakes up, he finds his wife In-hye in the corner of the studio with her camcorder in hand, watching his film. She was clearly angry though trying to hide her emotion as she told him that emergency services were on their way to evaluate them both, and the chapter ends as Yeong-hye walked onto the balcony to open her legs up to the sun, and her brother-in-law contemplates throwing himself over the edge in an act of suicide, but ultimately finds himself “rooted to the spot”.

This chapter ultimately felt like a give and take on Yeong-hye’s sovreingty. There were the larger examples such as her brother-in-laws blatant disregard of “stop” when they were having sex, but is also apparent in the way he entered her apartment uninvited, and assumed her cooperation in having sex with J. While this chapter is not heavy on the topic of food like the others, it is still driven by the same theme of Yeong-hye’s family trying to conform her to their vision. With each section, we see less agency given to Yeong-hye from the eyes of the observer despite what her actions may be.

The final section “Flaming Trees” is told from Yeong-hye’s sisters persepctive, In-hye. Yeong-hye has been at an inpatient facility of which In-hye is now visiting. She reveals to the reader that it has been some time since the incident with her husband, who after his release from jail went into hidingf, and much of her own family has cut her off for her continued involvment with Yeong-hye, whom she still feels a sisterly responsibility too. When she had arrived she was still refusing meat, and was now refusing food completly, the Dr. telling In-hye that if intrevanious feeding doesn’t work, they will have to take Yeong-hye to another hospital for more intense treatment. They give In-hye 30 minutes to make Yeong-hye eat something before they try a needle, and she agrees. Yeong-hye is found doing a handstand in her room, and doesn’t move or acknowledge the presence of another until In-hye pushes her over.

When In-hye promts her to eat, Yeong-hye explains a dream she had that taught her that trees stand with their airms in the earth, and says that she doesnt need food, only water. She later goes on to tell her sister that she was no longer an animal, but a tree, requiring only light and water. The doctors tell In-hye that if inserting a feeding tube does not work she will have to be immediatly transfered at risk of her starving to death. While watching Yeong-hye sleep, In-hye admits to herself her sisters madness, and reflects upon her life over the last few years that eluded to her own. When her time is up, the doctors take Yeong-hye away to put in the feeding tube. She resist heavily, and In-hye becomes upset, rushing into the room as Yeong-hye struggles and blood starts to run from the tube. The book ends as both Yeong-hye and In-hye are in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, unclear if it is one or both of them who are to be patients.

This final chapter really makes the book feel as though it may be the story of two young women as opposed to just Yeong-hye. In-hye’s life is so deeply woven into this novel that I found myself more understanding of her than any other character in this book by the end. While she doesn’t understand her sisters motivations behind becoming vegetarian, she has observed and acknowledged the abuse Yeong-hye suffered because of it. She is the only family member willing to help her sister even after all that has happened, and sufferes a similar arch to Yeong-hye. When her sister gives up meat her family falls apart around her trying to have her conform to the point where they are forcing upon her the same anguish she gave up the meat to save herself from.

Her family also notably forces the pleasure out of an event that they normally precede as an event of joy, a family meal of many multiple lavish dishes, homemade by family members. But even this is a guise to conform Yeong-hye to their liking, and when her parents are disapointed by Yeong-hye’s refusal to eat what was prepared the conflict ensued. If we were to ask the question of why Yeong-hye chose to slit her wrists in that moment, I can only make guesses as it was not explicite. My main guess would be a search for control, having just had her autonomy stripped from her, her family members restraining and force feeding her, she turned to the fastest way to regain ultimate control of her body, suicide. Wether or not she wanted to die in the moment is irrelivent to the fact that she would rather be dead than conformed in the way her family would see fit. We see another character, her brother-in-law, portray this same line of thinking later on in the book, though he ultimatly finds himself unable to move.

There are many refreences in this book to the idea of a person being a tree. In “The Mongolian Mark” upon learning that emergency services are coming for him, when Yeong-hye’s brother in law contemplates throwing himself over the edge of the balcony and to his death, but finds himself “rooted to the spot”. Later in “Flaming Trees” In-hye sees the knotted trunk of a tree and pictures her sisters face inlaid over it. Later, when Yeong-hye believes she is transforming into a tree, her roomate tells In-hye how she will spend hours on her hands, as if they are rooting her to the earth. I think this supports my idea that this book is an analogy for ignored mental illness and conformity vs healing. By the time Yeong-hye is recieving compassion, it is easier on her mind to acept this idea of being a tree as a way to make up for her lost agency.

Ultimately, this book demonstrates the very real possibility of gaining an eating disorder of sorts when raised around abuse, or abused in adulthood. As her relationship with the world deteriorates, so does her relationship with food. One could argue that if her husband had loved and supported her when she was first in pain, the rest of the story may not have been there to be told. After the focuses I had last quarter, this feels like watching the effects of that untreated play out. And while I do not want to say that her case is extra dramatized, most people with extreme cases of eating disorders think they’re turning into trees.

I did some surrounding reserach on this book, and while it is not heavily banned, it is prohibited in some places due to it’s explicite content. It was criticised in South Korea for challenging the diet narrative and the portrayal of abuse within families, but also recieved incredible reviews for it’s harsh realities and critical thinking around food and mental wellbeing. While it was not an easy read either time I think it’s an important piece of litreture to challenge ones ideas around self agency and conformity around food and family.

“When I saw the hills I laughed and shuddered at the same time. The peaks looked like giant friend fish heads trying to jump out of a vat of oil. Behind each hill, I could see shadows of another fish, and then another and another. And then the clouds would move just a little and the hills would suddenly become monstrous elephants marching slowly toward me! Can you see this? And at the root of the hill were secret caves. Inside grew hanging rock gardens in the shapes and colors of cabbage, winter melons, turnips, and onions. These were things so strange and beautiful you can’t ever imagine them” (Tan pg.7)

Pre-Reading Notes (04/11/2023)

Starting with a slice of life family novel, this week I will be reading The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I actually discovered this book in the Student Equity and Arts Lounge (the SEAL) on campus, and checked in out of their mini library months ago without reading it. I have a little background on the book, I know it follows four families, highlighting the Chinese mothers and their Chinese American daughters, and presents stories through vignettes. I do not however, know that much about how it connects to food studies, only that when I said I was a food studies student interested in different ideas of eating, the person in the SEAL said “oh my god you have to read this book”. The books is said to be structured like a Mahjong game, in four parts and sixteen chapters, I’m sure the deeper reasoning for this will become apparent but for now it’s an incredibly fun way to think of reading a book, as a collaborative game in many parts. The book is 329 pages, written originally in English, and published in 1989. The version I have was published in 2019 with an updated author preface.  

Preface Notes

This was Tans first novel, and she worried that it would not pick up due to it being a story about Chinese Americans by a Chinese American author. She also noted that people believe this book to be a thinly veiled memoir although she has never been divorced (spoiler?) or had any children. She mentions that though they are not direct memoirs of her life, she finds herself “emotionally shaken and exhilarated by unexpected epiphanies” at the completion of each novel, demonstrating how our chosen form of expression never fails to betray our true feelings. She tells us that though her mother is not exactly a character portrayed in “The Joy Luck Club”, her life and subsequentially Tans’ life does reflect intensely through this novel.  

She mentions the way her mother spoke about her childhood, and how it changed after the release of her first novel. I am familiar with the sudden switch from distain to pride once one has made a public achievement, but what stood out to me was the way in which her “lazy daydreaming” was now titled as a “wild imagination”. Despite these things, she concludes the preface with clear and desperate love for her mother.  ‘

Post-Reading Notes

It’s hard to summarize a book like this without giving you a multi-page breakdown of the many characters, interconnecting storylines, and moments of pure emotional turmoil this book lays out for you. If you were hoping to read that, I suggest you just go and read the book, it was an absolute masterpiece and stayed on my mind for days. While food is not the driving conflict of the novel, the plot is heavy with instances of food driving the main plotlines, and examples of how food transforms simple circumstances into extraordinary or notorious ones. I have picked a few to use as examples, but if you are interested in seeing a list of every kind of food names in the novel, I actually found one here.

The books titular story The Joy Luck Club follows Jing-Mei “June” Woo, as she is excepted to take her now deceased mothers place in the Joy Luck Club.

The Joy Luck Club was originally started as a way to cope with the war, after some research I think they are referring to the time period of the Manchukuo puppet government, so between 1931 and 1945. Four women who came together weekly to cook themselves a feast and bet what little money they had playing Mahjong, taking turns hosting and creating an abundance out of what little they could pull together for each other. They were not the poorest of those they lived around and often were shamed for cooking themselves elaborate meals in such difficult times, but continued to hold to the tradition, needing something to bring them that much needed joy and luck.  

While the story usually ends in a variation of her mother using the winnings to buy rice or broth, June recalls one time her mother told her the true ending to that story, which was that she fled the town with her two children on her back, beginning a long treck to find her husband stationed far away. Suyuan has to leave her two children on the side of the road to complete the journey, and while she never learns the fate of her children, at the end of the chapter it is revealed that they are alive and in communication with Junes family.  Throughout the chapter food is present in almost every scene, and when it is present it is described as varied and abundant, they do not describe in detail times in which they have gone without. The Joy Luck Club now deals in stocks at their meetings instead of betting with each other, and the food is bought from a local restaurant. June is pushed to travel to find her family, not to meet them per say, but to spread the memory of her mother.

Early on the book is heavy in themes of conflicting identify, with Junes memories of her mother being both fond and heavy with something that feels like regret, or discontentment. Suyuan dealt with external conflicts to her identity while using what little she had to create the “feasts” for the Joy Luck Club. There is also Junes conflict with her Chinese heritage, highlighted by her inner monologue surrounding her families clothing, and use of her American versus her Chinese name.  Conflicting identity seems to be one of the key themes of this book, demonstrated many times through food and consumption.

In “Scar” presented by An Mei Hsu, she recalls how after her mother left her and her brother, An-Meis family referred to them as “two eggs that nobody wanted, not even good enough to crack over rice and porridge”. She is encouraged to forget her mother, to act as if she never existed and when she returns is conflicted on how to approach being around her. Despite having been tossed aside by her family, An-Meis mother returns when her own mother gets sick, to create her a medicinal soup of herbs, medicine, and the flesh of her arm. This relates to food studies in both the act of consuming flesh as a form of medicine/sustenance, but also food as medicine, and the conflicting act of returning to a home that banished you, to draw your own blood for someone who may not do the same to you. This chapter was heartbreaking, and left me with so many questions for Amy Tan.

I’m having trouble picking my book for next week but I will be having my roommate pick for me at random when they get home.