Chang-Rae Lee Coming Home Again Analysis

In this interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir 's mother 's horrible decent to death, Beauvoir finds out her Maman is taken to the hospital for a broken bone after a fall, instead the fact that her mother has intestinal cancer is revealed. After many surgeries, her mother’s suffering is only drawn out. The author ponders on the virtue of doing so, in conflict with condescending doctors while empathizing with overburdened nurses. Simone de Beauvoir gives us a reflective and somewhat detached depiction of the final days in the life of her declining mother. Interwoven throughout the novel is the escalating succession of the authors mother dying of cancer, there are also recollections of the relationships of younger years among herself, sister, and parents.

Finding this healthy version of a common comfort food brought upon a feeling of freedom, something I hadn't felt in a while. Usually a burger and fries meal would have brought upon feelings of anxiety. When I first saw the meal approaching my table, those feelings of uncertainty began to arise. When the waiter placed

Some say food is an exploration of culture, and taste evokes lush memories of the past. “ In An Island Passover” by Ethel G. Hofman, she described her life in the Shetland Islands. Every year, Hofman’s family celebrates Passover- a traditional Jewish holiday where time and effort to prepare a meal is like painting, and it takes months to reveal a masterpiece. While Hofman had a positive recollection of her family’s traditional cuisine, author of “Fish Cheeks”, Amy Tan did not share the same experience. Tan felt ashamed of sharing her traditional cuisine with a pastor's son whom she was in love with. Tan strived for her crush’s approval because she did not want to be deemed strange. Hofman and Tan had striking differences in

“Against Meat” written by Jonathan Safran Foer is an article about a man’s personal experience with food. He starts the article introducing his grandmother who was a holocaust survivor and her relationship to food. The author explains what food means to him and how it has affected him culturally. Foer introduces his personal points to the reader leaving them questioning what food really means to them. Although I cannot completely identify with the author, my family does share some similarities. My grandmother came from Egypt where she was in hiding from her neighbors.

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.

In “How Ramen Got Me Through Adolescence,” Veronica Greenwood (2014, August 1) describes how during a three year period expanding from the beginning of her middle school years, to the end, she was at a very troubled spot in life. She felt as if she was an outcast and that there was nobody else like her, nobody that had similar interests, or anybody who acted the same way as her. She describes how the only time that she every felt like she was in her “comfort zone” was when she was either reading, or eating Ramen Noodles. The genre of this story seems comes off as being a memoir. Veronica Greenwood (2014, August 1) says “for more than three years I ate a packet nearly every day, a thousand steaming bowls” (para. #6). This her describing how her life was previously over a stretch of three years.

McCorcle’s essay ‘Her Chee-to Heart is an informational essay with persuasive undertone that’s main point is that food has a positive emotional value. While the essay is best defined as informational, much of the essay's foundation is coming from the author's personal experience and thus, a more persuasive tone becomes embedded. There is a clear limitation exposed in McCorcle’s essay that cannot be ignored. While she promotes food as a form of comfort, it is unhealthy food that is most associated with in her essay. Turning to unhealthy foods as a form of comfort can develop into a detrimental habit.

In chapter one of Barbara Kingsolver’s novel entitled “Called home”. The author observes that American’s are depending on the manufacturing of industrial made food and is leading to the ignorance of American’s not realizing where and how their food is processed, Kingsolver’s aims to expose the American food industry and inform the readers how their everyday food is made.

In his poem, “Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt,” Melvin Dixon presents the protagonist Aunt Ida experiencing an internal as well an external dialogue with her family members. Initially, the poem starts off the mother of Junie, a young man who died of AIDS handing all the clothes to Aunt Ida. Automatically, the feeling of nostalgia and agonizing construct the atmosphere of the poem. However, as the poem continues it is revealed Aunt Ida is handed down the clothes to make a quilt. As she starts to quilt the atmosphere of the poem transition to a more unifying and commemorative feeling towards the families that have had a family member die from AIDS and for Junie too. Indeed, the poem is representative of what a family is because it demonstrates the

Families are different today than they were fifty years ago. Not just regarding the social changes with gay couples, divorced couples, and single parents, but other changes around us have caused the family to evolve. The invention of the television, the internet, and even freezers and microwaves have changed how the family functions. Compounding changes in the world around us, the treatment of women as equals has also adjusted the dynamic in households. In the novel Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, the author pins the changing of our family culture, with regards specifically to mealtime, on the women’s liberation movement from the sixties. (126) Family mealtime has changed over the years, but there are multiple reasons for its perceived demise. The women’s liberation movement gave women the chance to leave the kitchen and enter the workforce, but changes to the family meal began before women started taking up careers alongside men. Food processing, personal electronics, and the way our society raises children, have all changed how we eat together.

The Potato Eaters and The Merry Family share the theme of family meals by depicting societal view of middle-class Americans versus low-class Americans and each one’s abilities to provide food for their family; while What ‘Modern Family’ Says About Modern Families depicts our increasingly busy society, family mealtimes are fading, and now it is time to call everyone back to the dinner

Moreover, Ferris talks about how throughout the history of the south, the politics of power and place, have lead to the establishment of a cuisine that includes both privilege and deprivation. Thus, continuously impacting the food patterns of the modern day south. Ferris states, “In food lies the harsh dynamics of racism, sexism, class struggle, and ecological exploitation that have long defined the south; yet there, too, resides family, a strong connection to place, conviviality, creativity, and flavor” (Edible South, 1) . This is exemplified all throughout the text by many accounts of antebellum cuisine influenced by that of African and Native Americans.

This paper will discuss the multifaceted relationships among food, and culture. I will be looking at the relationships people have with food, and explore how this relationship reveals information about them. Their food choices of individuals and groups, can reveal their ideals, likes and dislikes. Food choices tell the stories of where people have travelled and who they have met along the way.

Claudia expresses again and again how marginalized she and her sister perceived themselves to be, "Adults do not talk to us - they give us directions" (10). When Claudia thinks back to a childhood illness she suffered, she remembers her mother's irritation at finding her sick in bed. Claudia questions the reliability of her perceptions of pain and confusion, "But was it really like that? As painful as I remember? Only mildly. Love...eased up into that cracked window" (12). Claudia's mother's irritation is tempered with compassion; she coats Claudia's phlegmy chest with salve and "hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the