My Mom Always Commanded By Don 't Take Your Emotions Out On Food

Near the beginning of this school year, my friend Bianca frequently asked me, “Are you going to finish that?” Initially I suggested that she buy herself something or pack lunch, but she always refused and went without eating. After reflecting, I realized that Bianca suffered from the plight of food insecurity. I was hit with a whirlwind of emotions… how could someone that I know not have the resources to feed herself. From that moment forward, I began packing a little extra each day. For the remainder of the school year, I always shared my food with her to ensure that having something to eat was not a concern for her. This daily ritual made me interested in researching whether others dealt with this same issue. Sparking my passion, my friend’s situation

When asked about the hunger problems in America one would imagine a homeless person asking and begging for food in the streets. However, what we fail to understand is that hunger is closer to us than what we think. A fellow co-worker or perhaps even the next door neighbor may be an example of someone who suffers from food insecurity. Food insecurity is when a person does not know when or where the next meal will come from. Food insecurity is most likely to develop in food deserts, a place where there is little to no fruits, vegetables and whole healthy foods. The documentary, A Place At The Table, is attempting to shed light on the argument that many Americans suffer from food insecurity because of low income and as result those individuals face various complications.

She says, “If we asked Mom about food—in a casual way, because we didn't want to cause any trouble—she'd simply shrug and say she couldn't make something out of nothing. We kids usually kept our hunger to ourselves …” (Walls, 42). The fact that Jeannette and her siblings are afraid that they will get in trouble if they ask about food, and they usually do not talk about their hunger because of that fear, shows how much their parents expect them to do for themselves. Rex and Rose Mary do not want to hear about their children being hungry and prefer that they find food themselves instead of having Rex or Rose Mary find food for them. When the kids do tell Rose Mary about their hunger, she shrugs it off. Around the same point in time in the novel, Jeannette and her sister Lori get so hungry that they resort to eating margarine and sugar. When Rose Mary discovers that the girls ate the last of the food in the house, she gets upset and says “It's not my fault if you're hungry" (Walls, 43). When she gets upset and says that it is not her fault, it implies that if the kids are hungry, then they are responsible for finding food to feed themselves. Most parents ensure that their children always have food, even if money is scarce. Rex and Rose Mary, however, allow the food supply in the house to get so low that their children either end up eating margarine mixed with sugar, or they keep their hunger pangs a secret.

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.

After reading the extensive “The New Face of Hunger” (Tracie McMillan), my eyes became more open to the overall issue of hunger, faced by many people today. In a few words, I was absolutely shocked by the true meaning and examples provided of what exactly food insecurity is. Honestly speaking, when I hear the word “hunger” I think of a human who has no food, living on the streets. “The New Face of hunger” brought to my attention that food insecurity is much more than simply having no food. In fact, “In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where, sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat” (The New Face of Hunger). Not only was I able to see the harsh

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.

Although I had sufficient meals in morning and evening, I was still hunger during day time. I played tennis on Wednesday. While running on the court, I felt extremely dehydrated and starving. When I hit the ball, I suddenly felt that I was going to fall down because I was shaky and exhausted. I ran to the bathroom and squatted down. I was overwhelmed by my weakness that a sense of insecurity surrounded me. “I am weak”, I told myself, “I can not do this”. I suddenly reflected on my experience in Yemen. I was sitting in the car while I witnessed refugee children knocking on my window and tirelessly begging for food. In their eyes, I saw no anger but fear. All they worried about were the basic need of living: food. Many people, nowadays, fast to lose weight. For them, fasting shows their courage and persistence. They lose the sympathy to the poor who starve to death. However, many poor people, including labors and refugees, have to do heavy manual work for livings. In addition to physical pain, the poor also suffer mentally. For instance, the refugee children are always worrying about their next meals with no sense of secure. They have no hope to their futures. With the experience of working in hunger, I am able to relate my feelings to poor people’s feelings and show empathy toward them.

“The food began to bother me, my stomach felt upset, and I would not be able to hold the food down very long.”(135) This suggests that, the narrator’s own physical body is refusing to settle with the food possibly serves as a metaphor that like the narrator, the food too doesn’t allow itself to adjust to the environment, and revolve around certain forces controlling their actions. The influence of society made the protagonist endure severe deprivation of food, the fact that living under a society that expects the protagonist to have a job and earn money forces the protagonist to live under a “cycle of life.” This being, the author represents the protagonist as with the irony of life, where the protagonists needs to work to eat, but has no food therefore works harder to eat more but continues until his sense of thoughts and his rational skills have been altered “but my brain sank deeper in chaos” (79).

Growing Up Empty is a chilling account of the struggle to get enough to eat that confronts

To begin with, fourteen years old Arnold describes his life while growing up in Wellpinit. He was malnourished. Arnold was a cartoonist, who often drew food and money and wished for it to be real. However, he realized the reality of being a reservation kid living with his family on the poor Spokane Indian Reservation. In the chapter, “Why Chicken Means So Much to Me,” he shares his formula about being poor. “Poverty is empty refrigerator plus empty stomach.” (Alexie 8). He described how sometimes his family missed a meal and slept on an empty stomach. Also, being hungry makes food taste better, especially when he hadn’t eaten for

In Don’t Blame the Eater, David Zinczenko composes his opinion on the fast food industry’s absence of nutritional information and more. Zinczenko starts his piece by giving his own life experience. He recalls his childhood trying to find food and that fast food was “the only available options for an American kid to get an affordable meal” (Zinczenko 462). By giving his own life experience, Zinczenko relates to the reader and grabs their attention.

He tells of a time when his stern and proud mother gave in to relief. This was what the program of government hand outs of food was known as. Relief was seen as a shameful thing to rely on and tells of this relief candidly as well as matter-of-factly, "Pulling the wagon back toward Lombard Street, with Doris following behind to keep the edible proof of our disgrace from falling off, I knew my mother was far worse of than I'd suspected. She'd never accept such shame otherwise. I studied her as she walked along beside me, head high as always, not a bit bowed in disgrace, moving at her usual quick, hurry-up pace.

Food insecurity causes health issues such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and early mortality among young single mothers. According to author Christine A. Stevens young single mothers are affected by food insecurity in two ways “first, the stress of food insecurity can lead to compounding issues of depression for this mother, second, food choice.” Factors that assist these problems are socioeconomic status and the ability to obtain adequate nutrition. These young single mothers do not have enough money to give nutritional food to their families. With limited money they do not have a choice for nutritional food and according to Stevens are forced to buy “inexpensive, high fat, high carbohydrates food” (Stevens 163). In

In Franz Kafka’s short story, “A Hunger Artist”, Kafka introduces an eccentric man known as the Hunger Artist. The Hunger Artist has committed his entire life to the art of fasting, allowing himself to be caged and displayed to the public as if he were a painting (Kafka 198). Despite all the emotional turmoil he endures, he takes a great amount of pride in fasting and believes that he can fast for extremely elongated periods (Kafka 200). Unfortunately, his pride not only causes internal conflicts but also tragically leads to his unfortunate demise (Kafka 205). Through the setting and the character development of the Hunger Artist, Kafka illuminates the dangers of self-pride and depicts pride as harmful and detrimental to one’s existence.

This project examines the construction of subjectivity in Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (fig. 1) and Chris Kraus’ Aliens and Anorexia (fig. 2) . These works inscribe notions of the self, the social, and the subject through and upon the body, addressing the interpolating poles of nutritive consumption and “willing the body away” through self-starvation. Throughout this essay, I will demonstrate how these artists engage with the spaces and discourses created around food and disordered eating to produce a counter dominant take on subjectivity, a thematic both artists attend to regularly throughout their careers.