Culinary Narratology in Everyday Life: Foodways and Identity ...

Culinary Narratology 19
arrives and asks for her driving license she does not have one, and is so panicked that she
keeps repeating “Mr. Sen teaches mathematics at the university” by way of explanation (134).
Although Mrs. Sen and Eliot are not in any way hurt, Eliot’s mother takes him away and the
narrative ends. This incident actually reveals the critical tension between Mrs. Sen’s
struggle to replicate her attachment to her past memory of India, as represented by its
foodways, and an American culture that urges immigrants to assimilate. 7
Mrs. Sen’s story shows that food preparation has become a way for her to reconstruct
her own identity and to re-assert her subjectivity outside of any prescribed position as a
newly arrived immigrant woman. The possessive form of the story’s title, “Mrs. Sen’s,”
should be noted, indicating a sense of ownership, while the object she possesses remains
intangible (William 74). To possess something, one must assert the presence of subjectivity
and a sense of existence. The incomplete title thus indicates an on-going process of forming
autonomy. In a way, this apostrophe “s” may imply a kind of alternative knowledge and
autonomy which at least hints at more productive and nurturing ways of creating
relationships with others (William 75). Though unsuccessful, Mrs. Sen will keep striving
for her own definition of living in diaspora by utilizing her foodways and culinary arts.
Through the performative act of daily culinary praxis, food preparation serves as Mrs. Sen’s
technique of resistance to assert a certain degree of agency and subjectivity, which function
as alternative ways of implicit self-articulation to protest the dominant culture.
Nevertheless, Mrs.
Sen’s frustration does not completely equal a failure of her agency. Instead, it is de facto a
continuation of the display of her determined resistance that reveals her sense of agency. In
the first place, she has given her life to this marriage and moved to America, given up her
community life in India and her native language and thus tries to negotiate a place in this
foreign country. It is within this confined condition that she intends to preserve a certain
degree of her way of life – her insistence on cooking in a traditionally Indian way.