‘An Awakening of the Senses’: Reading Julia Child's My Life in France as Gastrography

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the generic boundaries of Julia Child's My Life in France, and argues for its inclusion in non-fiction narrative food writing forms—variously termed food memoir, gastrography, and culinary autobiography, to name a few—typified by gastronomic literature. Food writing has been underpinned by a gendered philosophical framework that pits the (female-coded) domestic cookbook against a more generically malleable, narratively confessional, and structurally playful food writing, like (male-coded) gastronomic literature. Given its parallels to gastronomic literature—its irreverent tone, deep appreciation for cooking and eating, and dynamic form that melds travel writing, food writing, recipe, photo, and personal memory—I argue that to read Child's book as just ‘memoir’ would be to elide its connection to a broader culinary and literary tradition. Instead, I demonstrate the opportunity to reconsider women's existing contributions to a food writing style previously categorised as male. Reading My Life in France as an example of a specific kind of food/life writing builds on the work of Alice McLean and Traci Marie Kelly in contributing to an aesthetics of women's narrative nonfiction food writing.