Foodie+Lit

= Foodie Lit =

Foodie lit is best characterized by the presence of food. Food can take on such a prominent role that it becomes a landscape for the characters to navigate or even becomes a character in its own right. Such literature may include highly descriptive scenes of food preparation and/or consumption, as well as the inclusion of menus. While the form appeared in sporadic forms in earlier centuries, with the celebritization of food personalities, chefs, and food culture more broadly, the interest in food-related literature has sky rocketed. Some central concerns that are entertained in such literature would be how food comes to stand in for or inhibit relationships with others, the search for perfection or fulfillment, the uneasy tension between sexuality and food consumption particularly with respect to women, the potential for food tourism or other more imperializing/hierarchical relationships, the use of food to represent social, economic, or ethnic hierarchies, and so on.

==Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (2006)==

Recently made into a movie starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julia Powell, this book chronicles Julie Powell's attempts to cook her way through Julia Child's 524 recipes in //Mastering the Art of French Cooking.// The book both details her successes, failures, happy accidents, and misadventures in procuring ingredients and working through the recipes. It also intersperses stories about Julia Child and her coming into her own, as a cook and wife. Julia uses this obsessive commitment to find a more purposeful existence than her soul-sucking secretarial job can offer--mainly through cooking and blogging (see the original Julie/Julia Project blog). While at times, Julia's voice can be a bit neurotic, think media type="file" key="Julie__Julia_-_trailer.flv" width="238" height="238" align="right"the same kinds of tones from //Bridget Jones' Diary,// there does seem to be something real in her desperation to make more of her life and find more meaningfulness in it beyond temp work in Manhattan. She finds, ultimately, what Julia Child had hoped for all her housewives when she penned the cookbook--for them to be able to master that which was too daunting before. It is a witty and fun book, filled with lots of delicious food scenes, complaints of added pounds for late-night shopping runs for extra butter and cream, and worth the read.

==Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies by Laura Esquivel (1989)==

//Like Water for Chocolate//, or as it was originally written in Spanish //Como Agua Para Chocolate//, proves to be a delicious read, no matter which of the over 30 languages the text has been translated. This text launched Esquivel as a novelist, particularly after it was adapted for film.

The novel follows Tita and her love for Pedro, who she cannot marry because of her mother's very traditional belief that the youngest daughter must care for her until she dies. Her unrequited desires and unfulfilled passions are channeled into her cooking, where they become felt by any who taste her food. Drawing on the traditions of magical realism, the novel paints a richly textured narrative, where food becomes the vehicle for love, passion, culture, and connection. As the love conflict intensifies, so too does the secondary narrative of the Mexican Revolution.