Read My Plate

Whether perusing a recipe or learning what a literary character eats, readers approach a text differently when reading about food. Read My Plate: The Literature of Food explores what narrators and characters (in fiction, in performance, and in the popular genre of the ?food memoir?) cook and eat. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the inmates of the Terezin concentration camp, performance artist Karen Finley, novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and the celebrated chef-turned-travel-journalist Anthony Bourdain are just a few examples of the writers whose works are discussed. Close readings of the literal and figurative ?plates? in these texts allow a unique form of intimate access to the speakers? feelings and memories and helps readers to understand more about how the dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and social class affect what the narrators/characters eat, from tourti?re to collard greens to a school lunch bento box.

Deborah R. Geis expands our understanding of the literature of food, both in terms of genre and of methods to approach a portion of food writing. Her delicate explication of food memoir and performance art through lenses of gender, race, and migration melds with treatment of more traditional texts of fiction and poetry to yield a deeply empathetic contemplation about food?s personal and political resonance.

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