(Download) "Food Preparation, Food Consumption, And the Process of Identity Formation in Peter Balakian's Memoir Black Dog of Fate (Critical Essay)" by Studies in the Humanities ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Food Preparation, Food Consumption, And the Process of Identity Formation in Peter Balakian's Memoir Black Dog of Fate (Critical Essay)
- Author : Studies in the Humanities
- Release Date : January 01, 2007
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 383 KB
Description
Food for us was a complex cultural emblem, an encoded script that embodied the long history and collective memory of our Near Eastern culture. (47) This passage from Peter Balakian's 1997 memoir Black Dog of Fate suggests the important role that food preparation and food consumption play in the process of identity formation. While Balakian, a third-generation Armenian American, consumes Armenian food prepared by his mother and grandmother, he gains a visceral connection to his ethnic culture, which, at other times, he tries to sever; when, as a child, he visits the homes of his suburban playmates, he eats "American" food in an attempt to abandon or at least conceal his identity as an ethnic Other in mainstream America. (1) Throughout his memoir, Balakian includes many scenes centered around the preparation and consumption of both ethnic and "American" foods, demonstrating how, as a child living in post-war America, he attempts to negotiate the ethnic and "American" elements of his cultural identity. Although, as a child, Balakian unsuccessfully tries to dichotomize these seemingly contradictory elements, as an adult, he works to construct a holistic cultural identity that merges the ethnic and American components into a unified whole and thus works to satisfy his physical and emotional hungers.