The Hungry Self

Abstract

The importance of food as a cultural marker of difference has until fairly recently been neglected in multicultural discourse. This is probably because food – the acquisition, preparation and serving of it as well as oral and written expressions about food – has traditionally been the domain of women, who have often been relegated to the back of the bus (or literally sent to the kitchen) when it comes to multicultural/political issues. Yet very often activities connected to food are the sole source of power and expression for ethnic American women, serving as a means of self-affirmation, as well as a repository of familial memory. For Italian American women especially, who traditionally spend so much time in the kitchen, food has been a means of controlling a world in which they have very little power, a creative outlet, and a source of the sacred. Like Alice Walker's foremothers, who expressed themselves in quilts and gardens, Italian American women have recreated in their very sites of confinement sites of creative expression and empowerment. On the other hand, many Italian American women, writing about their lives, have rejected food and the production of it as a means of protest against a culture that has denied them opportunity for personal and artistic growth. This study examines the various ways in which Italian American women have written about food and food issues as they relate to their own experiences. I hope in this way to contribute to the discourse on food in multicultural studies particularly as an issue in ethnic American women's lives.