Tracing the Gastro-graphic Route towards Transculturality in Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan's A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family

• Published in: LITERARY VOICE
• Main Authors: Dalal, Sanghamitra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: LITERARY VOICE 2023
• Subjects: Literature
• Online Access: https://www-webofscience-com.uitm.idm.oclc.org/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:001114276300017

In this article, I will read Chinese-Singaporean-American Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan's culinary memoir A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family (2011) in order to examine how a conscious undertaking of learning how to prepare traditional home-cooked dishes can be transformed into a personal journey of self-discovery. Drawing from Rosalia Baena's concept of gastro-graphy I will explore how a gastro-graphic route can pave the way to embrace the fractures and fissures, the similarities and differences in transcultural predicaments. Consequently, I will attempt to argue that such transcultural culinary odysseys are not simply significant for conjuring up memories of home and belonging, but for being able to transmute the experience of cooking into an alternative perception of transculturality, which is liberating in its surrenderance and relinquishment.