Food, being a great mnemonic, nourishes, sustains, and elevates human experiences. It is deeply intertwined with ones identity, culture, community, and history. Let it be a humble family recipe or a grand feast or a nursery rhyme on food, it is always aspirational. This is a collection of essays written by scholars and academics specializing in niche areas of food and cultural studies research. This book explores how food narratives in different genresnovels, short stories, childrens books, cookbooks, memoirs, and famine narrativesrepresent, critique, and shape our understanding of culture, identity, memories, and human predicament. These essays offer interdisciplinary perspectives on how food in literature becomes a potent symbol, connecting readers to themes of culture, memory, identity, and social dynamics. Food in select short stories and novels traces the history of particular food habits, it depicts how the culinary reflects emotional excitement and trauma. Food in childrens literature, for instance, often embodies innocence and adventure, while famine narratives use the absence of food to depict suffering and resilience. Cookbooks and memoirs, on the other hand, bridge storytelling with everyday life, blending recipes with memories.
The culinary narratives in this volume present food not only as a source of sustenance but as a cultural artefact that holds stories about power, identity contestations, community, and survival. The book invites readers to consider the profound cultural meanings embedded in everyday meals, the stories and the memories surrounding them.
