The Culinary Sub-Text in Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘When Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine’ in Interpreter of Maladies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70042/eroth/501254Keywords:
diaspora,, discourse,, homeland,, South AsiaAbstract
When it comes to South Asian diaspora, families, communities and relations within the private space of the family is often pitted against the unfamiliar if not hostile territory of the public space. It is also a common understanding that while the process of assimilation works within spaces, the kitchen and the food prepared at home is the sacrosanct core that speaks of home and smells of home. This paper attempts to walk into one such home that might be given a label of a South Asian diasporic home with Jhumpa Lahiri's story 'When Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine' from the collection Interpreter of Maladies to question the role that certain specific social spaces play in the event that a war plays out within the four walls of this home and the effect that the culinary nostalgia has on the traumatic suffering of the war. This paper would also like to contest the engendering of stereotypical roles in the interface between food, families and identities.
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