Milk-Fed Discourse and Female Identity in Sara Suleri's Meatless Days

Discurso culinario, diáspora y maternidad en Meatless Days de Sara Suleri

“…Locating the gastronomic discourse in Suleri's memoir within the tradition of (South Asian) migrant literature, critics have foregrounded issues of culinary nostalgia (or lack of it) for one's homeland (Mannur, 2007), or else the tie between cultural roots and female identity (Roy, 2002). At a more corporeal level, it has been noted how Suleri locates the concept of food in women's sexed bodies on account of their maternal function, shifting the attention from the female body as a source of sustenance on to the act of being "consumed" through breastfeeding; that is, from the child's consumption of the maternal milk on to the mother's own consumption at the hand of the suckling child (Fagan, 2008). "In her awareness of the female bodies as homes for the unborn, and of the consumption upon birth of the mother through the infant's ingestion of the mother's milk", as Deirdre Fagan explains, "Suleri draws attention throughout Meatless Days to not only the relationship between women and food, but to the concept of women as food" (2008: 182) 2 .…”