Representing Home: Reading the Aesthetics of Food in Postcolonial Literature

• Published in: Journal of literary studies (Pretoria, South Africa) Vol. 36; no. 1; pp. 43 - 59
• Main Author: Lok, Joshua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 02.01.2020
• ISSN: 0256-4718; 1753-5387
• DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2020.1738714

This article seeks to establish aesthetic analysis as an integral approach to post-colonial literature, taking attention to form and depictions of beauty to stand for aesthetic qualities. More specifically, this article reads the treatment of food in Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace (2000) and Romesh Gunesekera's Reef (1995) as not only aesthetic achievements that resonate powerfully with many postcolonial concerns, but also as instances where aesthetically sensitive attention to form critically informs postcolonial concerns. Given the rapid development in the inter-sections between food studies and postcolonial criticism, food is no longer merely domestic and therefore apolitical, or in the play of flavours and spices and odours are the threads of colonial enterprises, national histories, independence movements, family legacies and personal narratives entwined around representations of home.