Tenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Situated in the junction of the alimentary and the literary, this paper investigates food and eating semantics as representations of gendered postcolonial experiences in the discourse of and about return migration. It explores how foodspeak is employed in building a narrative recalcitrant to colonial and patriarchal ideals, while putting emphasis on the fashioning of a female subjective I. The struggle that Chen’s female protagonist faces in her homecoming — always in the in-between, being at once autochthon and foreign, homesick and homeless — is articulated through the language of food, a language that incessantly confronts (and eventually, challenges) the imperialist thought, the continuing neo-colonization and the approaching globalization taking shape in the postcolonial community. My approach is twofold: first, I engage in a food-centered reading of the text to identify the postcoloniality of the returnee’s home community, their ambivalent relationship with the West and the tensions between guarding their traditions and adapting to globalization; second, I move from the community to the individual, to describe the returnee’s experience of coming home, the disintegration of her memory of home and her hybridity resulting in her exclusion within the community. As a conclusion, I submit that the returnee’s disconnection from home, from the West, and from any place, as symbolized by food metaphorics, allows her to be liberated from the psychosomatic oppressions entailed in being fully anchored to a single society and culture.