Analysis Of Kitchen By Banana Yoshimoto

Dorothy Allison’s essay, Panacea, recalls the fond childhood memories about her favorite dish, gravy. Allison uses vivid imagery to cook up a warm feeling about family meals to those who may be a poor family or a young mother. Appeal to the senses shows this warm feeling, along with a peaceful diction.

In Jessica Harris’s “The Culinary Season of my Childhood” she peels away at the layers of how food and a food based atmosphere affected her life in a positive way. Food to her represented an extension of culture along with gatherings of family which built the basis for her cultural identity throughout her life. Harris shares various anecdotes that exemplify how certain memories regarding food as well as the varied characteristics of her cultures’ cuisine left a lasting imprint on how she began to view food and continued to proceeding forward. she stats “My family, like many others long separated from the south, raised me in ways that continued their eating traditions, so now I can head south and sop biscuits in gravy, suck chewy bits of fat from a pigs foot spattered with hot sauce, and yes’m and no’m with the best of ‘em,.” (Pg. 109 Para). Similarly, since I am Jamaican, food remains something that holds high importance in my life due to how my family prepared, flavored, and built a food-based atmosphere. They extended the same traditions from their country of origin within the new society they were thrusted into. The impact of food and how it has factors to comfort, heal, and bring people together holds high relevance in how my self-identity was shaped regarding food.

She uses food and memories to keep her anchored. “Food nourishes the soul. I believe that everyone deserves a hand prepared meal. People need to slow down and eat. Food is a blessing that helps build community in the sharing of well prepared food.”

This film has many protagonists. The main protagonist is Martin Naranjo. He is an accomplished chef who is a widower. He lives with his three adult daughters who are very beautiful, but remain single. Naranjo lost his wife approximately ten years prior to the setting of the film. Since then he has assumed the role of father and mother. Naranjo works as a chef fulfilling is fatherly role and he also does all of the cooking, cleaning and laundry fulfilling his motherly role. Naranjo maintains that on every Sunday, the family shares a meal to share their life experiences of the week with each other. The meal seems to be a tradition in that family that has been a part of the family’s ritual prior to the passing of the mother. Some of the daughters find the meal to be more of a punishment than an enjoyment. Martin for most of the film has lost his ability to taste the flavor in the food he creates. He relies at work upon his best friend and fellow chef, Gomez played by Julio Mechoso, for taste. Martin is the main protagonist as he demonstrates the most change. He lets go of his adult daughters, one at a time while gaining two more daughters, Eden the daughter of his much younger bride than he and his unborn child with the same, Yolanda.

wrote the article “My Mom Couldn’t Cook”, argues that point by being the sole cook for his wife and daughter. Junod was inspired to cook for his family, by growing up eating the food prepared by a mother who he realized hated to cook and a later understanding that led him to the realization that she did not know how to cook. Tom Junod writes an entertaining piece, his credibility is built through the personal stories he shares and his emotional appeals have a way of keeping the audience interested, but his language becomes distracting and overall it takes away from his argument.

One of the notable aspects of Matsumoto’s history of Cortez is a sentimental relationship that she has established with her subjects in the course of her studies. On the first page, she has named and thanked almost a hundred members of this community, for contributing their time in sharing memories, personal experiences, institutional records, and their warm hospitality. Hospitality of the Cortez community members also shines in Appendix C where she mentioned twenty-four recipes that she got from Japanese women. These recipes ranged from traditional Japanese foods to more conventional zucchini bread to some cross-cultural cuisines like Jell-O mocha.

Food and family tradition are important for this story, since the food is seen as a way of communication and family tradition as an obstacle within Tita’s life. Ever since she had been born, her closeness to food was seen from that very moment. In the first "scene" of the book, this can be seen. “Tita made her entrance into this world, prematurely, right there on the kitchen table amid the smells of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, and cilantro, steamed milk, garlic, and of course, onion” (Esquivel, 5-6). This shows how she connects to food, and this connection only grows more throughout the story. Although, later on Tita is able to mix her own feelings within her food preparation helping her communicate what she feels. When she is cooking is also gets emotionally involved, therefore this lets her mix her feelings in the recipe as well.

Kitchen’s non-linear structure provides the reader with context on the foundation and depth of Mikage and Eriko’s relationship. Many flashbacks are added following Eriko’s death. Mikage’s time in the Tanabe residence is briefly described without many specifics, oddly enough it is pictured as her most prosperous. She then recounts her time in the house with a painful nostalgia. “But that was the summer of bliss. In that kitchen. I was not afraid of burns or scars.” ( 59) Memories exemplify Mikage’s acknowledgment of her happiness only after she loses it. The first part is only so brief because it skims over Mikage’s happiest moments, these memories are instead placed in the second part. The motive was to illustrate the abrupt reality of such bliss and how unsustainable it is. After the most intimate of the memories of Eriko, including

A soul in distress is always looking for a mean to escape through a difficult situation. In the story Like Water For Chocolate, Tita De La Garza who suffered like no other, isn’t the exception. This young woman since birth was instilled with a very deep love for cooking. When the people who she loved most betrayed her, cooking eased her pain. All of the intense emotions that she felt while preparing food, were unknowingly added to the recipes. The author, Laura Esquivel through the use of symbolism, she demonstrates that the role of food in the story isn’t there just to sustain life, it also transmits strong emotions such as desire, sorrow and healing felt by the

Kimora’s mother commented, “I cook dinner for them, but I allow them to eat by themselves or together and sometimes I do take my meal to room and there is no particular reason why.”

Cutthroat Kitchen, which aired on Food Network on August 11, 2013, has many examples of obedience to authority and fear. Claire Curtis who teaches in the department of political science, discusses fear and how it affects humans in her article. Michael Ray and Homer Spence also discuss fear from two separate views in their articles. Michael Ray is a psychologist with extensive experience in marketing communication. The television show Cutthroat Kitchen raises the question as to why people use fear to gain authority.

So began a thrice-daily ritual on the raft, with pumpkin pie and spaghetti being the favorite subjects. The men came to know louise’s recipes so well that if louie skipped a step or forgot an ingredient, Phil, and sometimes Mac, would quickly correct him and make him start over.” Instead of just saying “they were starving” Hillenbrand instead talks about how they fantasized about Louie’s Mother's cooking. She uses detail of the cooking to develop how hungry they are and to show the lack of food they have. I know when I'm hungry I often think about my mother's mash potatoes and ham, and how she puts everything together and cooks.

For example, in the novel, she states “It wasn’t easy for a person whose knowledge was based on the kitchen to comprehend the outside world.” The kitchen for Tita is the only place she can express herself and let out her emotions with no shame in herself, a place where she can feel freedom away from everybody. Cooking is one of the things that keeps Tita to go on with life, it is her passion. When Tita was going through dramatic situations in her life she used cooking as one her strengths to help her to be strong. In the article “Feminism in Like Water for Chocolate” it states, it is through food that Tita both compares and understands her own emotional and physical state. This statement explains to the readers that Tita can only figure out her emotions when it comes to the kitchen and cooking. Cooking to Tita is important because she entered the world right there on the kitchen table amid the smells of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, and cilantro. Cooking become a huge impact on Tita life because she felt like she can only express herself when it came to cooking. Just in the same way, Tita had another strength that attributed to her which includes, the long-lasting love she has for people. In the novel, the author Laura Esquivel explains how Tita is a person who is nurturing and self-sacrificing. For examples, in the novel she states,” the baby’s cries filled all the empty space in Tita’s heart. She realized that she was feeling a new love; for life, for this

I thought what a wonderful way to tell a story” (Mujica 38). The reader is often present in the kitchen with Esquivel when she writes about her past experiences in the kitchen.

Semiotics of the kitchen by Martha Rosler and Safe by Todd Haynes both revolves around the theme on Feminism. One is performing and the other acting, as to how women are depicted as weak or strong in character in different scenerios. In Martha Rosler’s six minutes video art, it represents a Martha Rosler, a women who performs using kitchen tools based in a kitchen setting. While, Safe by Todd Haynes is a two-hour plus film where it depicts a female character that slowly weakens in her mental and physical state as she have contracted a virus called “environmental illness” or rather multiple chemical sensitivity in the twentieth century. Her condition worsens as the film progresses.