« Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are »1 is the perfect illustration of cultural identity through food. What we eat is heavily influenced by our family and culture. Different cuisines are connected to different cultures.
Food, cooking and eating habits play a major role in every culture. Eating is not simply a biological necessity, it is an act full of meanings that epxress itself through various symolic ways.
The moment of preparing food for consumption can be the reflection of a cultural ritual and most of the time in literature or even in everyday life the symbolic of food has not a big link to food as such; for instance in the island where I come from, Mayotte, if there is a big event that is coming like an important …show more content…
The book can be seen as Jhumpa Lahiri's own story since her parents are also Indian immigrants who are settled in the United States; she even described here parents' experience by saying that « The way my parents explain it to me is that they have spent their immigrant lives feeling as if they are on a river with a foot in two different boats. Each boat wants to pull them in a separate direction, and my parents are always torn between the two. They are always hovering, literally straddling two worlds » this can be easily applied to her characters Ashima and Ashoke who struggled to raise their family in a new backgroung. Fir instance we can say that their first confrontation with the American culture was after Ashima has gave birth to Gogol and she had to name the newborn baby but as the usual Bengali tradition she has to wait for a letter coming from her family in India with the name of the baby but the American system sort of forced them to choose a name right away and that is how Gogol ended with his name which is actually a pet name if we refer to the Bangali costume and it is supposed to be used only in the private sphere of the family not in public; if the hospital did not urge the Gangulis to choose a name …show more content…
The author depicts those moments when they are in relation with birth, death and marriage; she also highlights Bengali food habits which are used as means of cultural gathering among the members of the Indians that are scattered around the United
Food, cooking and eating habits play a major role in every culture. Eating is not simply a biological necessity, it is an act full of meanings that epxress itself through various symolic ways.
The moment of preparing food for consumption can be the reflection of a cultural ritual and most of the time in literature or even in everyday life the symbolic of food has not a big link to food as such; for instance in the island where I come from, Mayotte, if there is a big event that is coming like an important …show more content…
The book can be seen as Jhumpa Lahiri's own story since her parents are also Indian immigrants who are settled in the United States; she even described here parents' experience by saying that « The way my parents explain it to me is that they have spent their immigrant lives feeling as if they are on a river with a foot in two different boats. Each boat wants to pull them in a separate direction, and my parents are always torn between the two. They are always hovering, literally straddling two worlds » this can be easily applied to her characters Ashima and Ashoke who struggled to raise their family in a new backgroung. Fir instance we can say that their first confrontation with the American culture was after Ashima has gave birth to Gogol and she had to name the newborn baby but as the usual Bengali tradition she has to wait for a letter coming from her family in India with the name of the baby but the American system sort of forced them to choose a name right away and that is how Gogol ended with his name which is actually a pet name if we refer to the Bangali costume and it is supposed to be used only in the private sphere of the family not in public; if the hospital did not urge the Gangulis to choose a name …show more content…
The author depicts those moments when they are in relation with birth, death and marriage; she also highlights Bengali food habits which are used as means of cultural gathering among the members of the Indians that are scattered around the United