Mapping Emotions, Culture and Identity through Food and Memory in Esther David’s Book of Rachel

Abstract

Food imagery has appeared in literature from time immemorial but food studies have started to gain impetuous in the very recent years. From the twentieth-century French philosopher Michel de Certeau who has worked on the ‘natural history’ of food with reference to material, social, technical, and economic history up till the contemporary researchers like Deborah Lupton who has worked upon the relationship of food to body and identity, establishes how food codes in literature act as significant connotative language. The Jewish diaspora throughout history is considered as most savage exile creating numerous Jewish communities in different countries. Bene Israel is the community of Jews in India. The experience of displacement leads to cultural ambivalence, a feeling of homelessness, and culinary nostalgia. Esther David’s Book of Rachel is a story of Bane Israel woman Rachel, who fights to preserve the heritage and culture of bene Israel Jews after most of the members of the community migrated to Israel. Food in the novel acts as a cultural code to bring back the community together. The research paper explores how food, consumption, and recipes in the novel recreate the Jewish identity, an essential reconnect with home through culinary memories.

Keywords

• cultural identity
• dislocation
• diaspora