Beyond Sustenance: Food as Memory, Identity and Resistance in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices and Padma Lakshmi’s Love, Loss and What We Ate.

Deepthimol D

Beyond Sustenance: Food as Memory, Identity and Resistance in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices and Padma Lakshmi’s Love, Loss and What We Ate.

Author(s)	Ms. Deepthimol D
Country	India
Abstract	The study investigates how food has been portrayed as a gendered cultural artifact in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices and Padma Lakshmi’s Love, Loss and What We Ate. It uses Alice Mclean’s concept of gender and food identity as a theoretical framework in analysing the text. The study says food is not something that human beings eat to survive. Cooking and eating food is a method of storytelling in The Mistress of Spices and Love, Loss and What We Ate. Food helps in people’s memories, identity and resistance. The Mistress of Spices and Love, Loss and What We Ate employ food in such a manner. In Di Divakaruni’s novel spices are like a store of family knowledge and a healing of emotional wounds. In Divakaruni’s novel spices are like a store of family knowledge and a way to heal emotional pain. She “connects her traditions with her new life through spices.” Lakshmi’s memoir is similar Lakshmi’s memoir is similar in that she writes down her recipes and memories of food to tell her story of hardship moving to a place and being vulnerable. Food is like a language that helps her survive and understand herself. Lakshmi’s memoir and Divakaruni’s novel they both show food as a way to express oneself and Divakaruni’s novel and Lakshmi’s memoir make food a big part of understanding oneself. The study is about perceptions of self-esteem for women in their homes and kitchens. Theories used are related to food and gender, psychosocial memory and interaction and postcolonial international relations. The analysis has demonstrated that narratives of women and food have the power to liberate women rather than imprison them. Food is a part of identification and is a vehicle for political and cultural statement. Women writers use food to communicate their feelings and rebel against the stereotypical ideals that men have set for women. Food is also used as a communication tool by women writers to locate their identities in a country and express their voices. This study is important because it examines the use of food as a medium of self-expression for women in literature. Storytelling of food is one of the ways women can empower themselves and get their voices heard. Finally, food is conceptualized as an embodied form of storytelling that empowers women to transmute quotidian practices into acts of cultural resistance and self-authorship.
Keywords	Key words: Food Studies, Memory ,Identity ,Resistance
Field	Arts
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 1, January-February 2026
Published On	2026-02-27

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Beyond Sustenance: Food as Memory, Identity and Resistance in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices and Padma Lakshmi’s Love, Loss and What We Ate.

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