LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 22:11 November 2022
ISSN 1930-2940

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         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Collective Food Memories in a Transnational Space:
A Study of Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta’s Those Delicious Letters

Anupama T P., M.A, M.Phil., B.Ed., Research Scholar and
Dr. M Subbulakshmi, M.A, M.Phil., Ph.D., Research Supervisor


Courtesy: www.amazon.com

Abstract

Academicians have been curious about the ways in which people of different cultures communicate with one another in the context of diaspora ever since globalization first started to gain a foothold around the world. The intensity of people's voices increased as a result of their proximity to one another, which was powered by subsequent causes such as migration and trade that brought people together.

Food, a vital aspect of culture, has also gone through such discursive transformations as civilizations merged and overlapped with one another. This allows a cultural and anthropological approach to food studies, which diverges from the extant scientific and nutritional approaches taken to food to a great extent.

Memory Studies, on the other hand, has broadened its scope beyond a purely physiological one and has stepped into the psychological and sociological realms on account of recent discoveries and studies in the subject area.

Conducive to both these developments in the respective disciplines, this article presents a reading of the novel Those Delicious Letters by Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta, set in a transnational diasporic setting that unravels the role of collective food memory in Bengali culture. The expressions of transnational collective memory are investigated by examining the gastronomic elements present in the story of the Bengali American author. It is accomplished via the negotiation of unique personal experiences of characters in the novel and a collective understanding of natives of the culture, both of which confirm one another.

Keywords: Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta, Those Delicious Letters, cuisine, culture, collective memory, diaspora, transnational, family, and recipes.

Food in Diasporic Literature

Literary depictions of immigrant life, cultural transitions, nostalgia, feelings of alienation, the sense of home, homelessness, and other related subjects have been studied by academics working in the field of Diaspora Studies for several decades. Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Amitav Ghosh, Sunetra Gupta, Anita Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni are some of the well-known Indian authors who have contributed to this literary tradition. Other authors in this tradition include Amitav Ghosh, Sunetra Gupta, and Anita Nair. Migration, marginalization, homesickness, conflict, identity crisis, racial, cultural, and gender bias, cross-cultural encounter, and disintegration are some of the topics that are discussed. Many of these issues have their roots in culture. Each of these subjects is analyzed considering its relationship to the others.

Food, which is a crucial component of these cultural challenges, has also been investigated in the works of several of the authors that have been mentioned above, such as The Mistress of Spices, Interpreter of Maladies, Fasting Feasting, Wife, Jasmine, Moonlight into Marzipan, and other works. Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta’s Those Delicious Letters is a contemporary novel. Owing to her articles and blogs on the internet under the penname "The Bong Mom," Datta has gained some reputation.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Anupama T P., M.A, M.Phil., B.Ed., Research Scholar
anupamathampipreetha@gmail.com

Dr. M. Subbulakshmi, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Research Supervisor

Department of EFL
SRM Institute of Science & Technology
Kattankulathur 603203, Tamil Nadu, India
subbulakshmi.srm@gmail.com
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