Analysis Of If You Are What You Eat Then What Am I

Improved Essays
In the essay, If You Are What You Eat Then What Am I? The author is struggling with finding herself. She is stuck between two different cultures, The Indian culture and the America culture. Throughout the authors essay she uses food as imagery to compere her problems with here culture and the culture she’s living in now. Is she part of the American culture now or is she still apart of the Indian culture even though she no longer lives in her home country. Not knowing who she is she tells her story of the changing of culture’s from Indian to American and how both are very different. In this essay the author uses the different cultural food to show imagery in the difference of cultures from American and India to help the reader visualize the …show more content…
These foods are what the American culture believes is okay to eat. Her mother disagrees and does not want her to eat this. Her mother opens a can of tuna not knowing why it stinks so terribly bad. This is an example of the difference of cultures and being unaware of the American culture. Since Geeta Kothari mother does not know about the tuna and why it smells Geeta Kothari becomes very frustrated. Geeta Kothari states, “There is so much my parents don’t know. They are not like other parents, and they disappoint me and my sister. They are supposed to help us negotiate the world outside, ad teach us the signs, the clues of proper behavior: what to eat and how to eat it” (2013 …show more content…
This may be a clue to help the reader foreshadow what will happen is the future with the authors fight between the American culture and the Indian culture. The author is struggling with her culture now she can’t remember the names of different spices and cannot prepare her cultural food correctly. This also may be a sign of Kothari losing her own Indian culture and changing to American culture. The author questions herself “What does this mean that I cannot replicate my mother’s Dal” (2013 p.926). Again he compares food to her own culture. She doesn’t not know how to create this dish that she has been tough plenty of times, but does not remember how to correctly prepare. This is another example of Kothari losing her own

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