Food and Diasporic Identities in Diana Abu Jaber’s Crescent, Richard C. Morais’ The Hundred-Foot Journey, and Marsha Mehran’s Pomegranate Soup

Abstract

This dissertation applies the post-colonial theory to three novels—Crescent (2003) by Diana Abu-Jaber, Pomegranate Soup (2005) by Marsha Mehran, and The Hundred-Foot Journey (2008) by Richard Morais—to show the role that ethnic food from “home” plays for diaspora immigrants. To do so, it applies the concepts of ethnicity, cultural dominance, the third space, exoticism, stereotypes, the subaltern, Radhakrishnan’s concept of three phases of migration, Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity and imitation, and Said’s concept of exile. The dissertation consists of four sections. The Introduction Section introduces the three focal writers and the representation of ethnic food in their works; in addition, it explores post-colonial theory and adopts related concepts for the analysis of the three novels. Section One applies the abovementioned concepts to Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, considering ethnic food in the context of diaspora. Section Two focuses on Pomegranate Soup by Mehran. It is about how cultural background affects the characters’ identities in relation to food. Section Three explores Morais’s The Hundred-Foot Journey, focusing on the character of Hassan, who was born in his parents’ room above his family’s restaurant and was exposed to Indian food and its aromas from the moment he was born. Section Four aims to compare the aforementioned three novels in regard to their treatment of the immigrants and ethnic food connection to their identity. It also links the authors with their characters. Finally, the Conclusion section concludes and summarizes the whole dissertation.