White Food Versus Ethnic Food: Contrasting Food Choices and Intergenerational Family Conflicts in David Wong Louie’s The Barbarians are Coming

Abstract

This study explores the dynamics of the identity construction process in David Wong Louie’s The Barbarians Are Coming (2000) in the light of cultural food theories, focusing specifically on the views of Claude Fischler and Deborah Lupton. The study discusses the contrasting food choices and eating habits of the first and second generation Chinese Americans reporting the intergenerational conflicts born by the adherence to American and/or ethnic dietary regimen and their disruptive effect on the family unit. The article argues that food and foodways of Chinese Americans guard the culturally defined Chinese culinary regime against the workings of white dietary practices, but the interaction with a social variable such as class challenges this reserved attitude towards the white palate. The analysis of the novel demonstrates that once the desire of eating is no more tempered by the natural tendencies of the ethnic culinary culture, the appetite gets personalized through nonconforming food practices based on the changing socio-economic position of the characters.