This book explores the food memoir—or foodoir—as a literary form where cooking, eating, feeding and remembering are powerful modes of storytelling. Moving beyond food as mere nourishment, the book examines how culinary practices shape, negotiate and transform personal and collective identities. Bringing literary studies into dialogue with sociology, anthropology and cultural theory, it explores food, selfhood, memory, gender, culture and power, across Western and South Asian writings. Ultimately, the book demonstrates how narratives of food reveal complex relationships between individual experience, cultural memory and social life.

The Author:
Nilanjana Debnath, Assistant Professor, English, ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, Hyderabad.

Series Editors:
Nandana Dutta teaches at the Department of English, Gauhati University.
Krishna Sen is former Professor and Head of English at the University of Calcutta, and was the Leverhulme Visiting Professor of English at the University of Leeds.

Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Narrative Foodways

1. Delectable Words: Defining the Genre of Food Memoir

2. Building Up the Flavours: A Brief History of Food Writing and the Development of Food Memoirs

3. Feeding the Self: Fashioning the “I” in Food Memoirs

4. Culinary Comforts: Fashioning “Home” through Food Transactions

5. Stirring the Pot: Exploring Gender in Food Memoirs

6. Tasting Words: The Role of Recipes in Food Memoirs

Epilogue: Crumbs

Bibliography
Index