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

Culinary Narratology 21
practice of culinary skills represents her “arts of existence” which are, in Foucault’s words,
“those intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of
conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being,
and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain
stylistic criteria” (The Use of Pleasure 10-11). In coping with the dispossessed life in
diaspora, cookery has become an important way to ease Ashima’s sense of uprootedness and
to further re-build a certain degree of self agency and autonomy.
In the first half of the novel, Ashima is portrayed as typical immigrant woman who fears
that her previous life will vanish and be replaced by “something more complicated and
demanding” (49-50). Hence, in the cultural aspects of everyday life, she privileges India
over America, as demonstrated by her choices of wearing traditional Indian sari and
preserving Bengali food recipes, despite all the inconveniences this entails (65). Dress and
food thus become salient cultural possessions that Ashima adheres to in her daily life in order
to maintain her familiar cultural identity. In the first half of her immigrant life in the US,
Ashima, a faithful, submissive wife as well as a caring mother, considers her husband and
children’s interests the most. After the births of Gogol and Sonia, children become
Ashima’s second focus with regard to networking with other Bengali immigrant families.
Her son Gogol’s baptism, the “annaprasan, his rice ceremony” (38), is the first big event that
brings other Bengali families into Ashima’s circle. Though Ashima tries her best to
replicate the authenticity of this important ritual, she still feels a sense of loss for she cannot
help wishing that her own siblings and parents could be there to feed and bless her son (40).
Initially as a newly arrived immigrant, Ashima perceives the US as a foreign country where
her son Gogol’s birth “so alone, so deprived” (25) due to the absence of elder relatives’
prayers and blessings for the new born baby. Therefore, the Bengali community serves as
her only “acquaintances” or “substitutes for the people who really ought to be surrounding
them” (24), providing solace and support. Whenever a decision is to be made, Ashoke and