The Food Practices of Arabs in the Diaspora in the Writings by Diana Abu Jaber

Title: The Foodways practices of Arabs Diaspora in the Writings of Diana Abu Jaber

Abstract:The Arab American Literature is considered as one of major ethnic literary frame work that aglow in the United States. This literary tradition deploys the cultural issues to negotiate how Arabs discuss their existence in Diasporic milieu and how these cultural tropes as food become a trope of multi-culturalism and radical empathy of hyphenated identities in the host-land.

Key words: Arab Diaspora, United States, Cultural trope, Food, Host-land

In the context of Arab-American immigrants in the U.S., there is great interest and recognition of passion related to preparing, eating, and consuming food. Thus, many studies attempt to raise questions about the different meanings and roles of Arab food and foodways in the diaspora. Similarly, many writers and scholars provide a range of perspectives on food, culture, and identity in the U.S.

Trans-culturalism embodies clashing cultures that stand as a mirror in Diana Abu-Jaber’s writings. She uses food references to let the reader understand the great spirit and value of transcultural and multicultural acts in the host land. Analyzing food references in Abu-Jaber’s writings reveals many immigrant experiences with food that depict the lives of Arab-Americans and their different postures and deals with the position of in-betweenness of cultures. Abu-Jaber deploys food that does not contradict the dual heritages to solve transcultural possibilities. Thus, food use appears in different other spheres that are linked with the lives of Arab immigrants within the American multicultural society. The multiple reflections of food motifs in Abu-Jaber’s works emphasize how food represents and exposes the diversity of contemporary discourse on culture and identities in different multicultural areas and demonstrates that food can be used as a transcultural motif.

Abu-Jaber's personal experience was pertinent to developing her exciting writing and transcultural views. Her experience as an immigrant stimulated her focus on the issue of crossing the boundaries, both physical and mental. She chooses characters who find themselves in the in-betweenness of cultures. Besides, Abu-Jaber tries to introduce relocation from one cultural sphere to another. The struggles that characters experience to create alternative identities lead Abu-Jaber's work to embody the characteristics of the theme of trans-culturalism.

Abu-Jaber’s work has already introduced her approaches to the immigrant experience. For example, the Language of Baklava is a culinary memoir in which she lets food be the fulcrum of her narrative. The memoir follows her adventures of growing up in a food-obsessed Arab-American family during the 1970s and 80s. In the same way, The Language of Baklava is a fascinating tale of confused exile, great food, and home truths. She advocates that as follow:

Food is such a great human connector; it's so intimate. And Middle Eastern food, when it’s done well, is impressive. So I thought, let food be a metaphor for experience.¹

In addition, the memoir explores the feelings of rootlessness and the constant pressures on immigrants to assimilate. Every chapter revolves around his father's traditional Middle Eastern recipes through words and images from her Arab-American experience. She tells a textured immigrant tale filled with dishes, which are rich and flavourful. Thus, she uses food to re-create Arab culture and re-tell the American identity through the lives of a Jordanian immigrant family living in the space in-between two cultures. In other words, this space, called by Victor Turner “liminality,” refers to an environment “whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise.”²

Diana Abu-Jaber raises how identity leads to embracing a multicultural viewpoint. It can be proved by concentrating on Diana in the memoir The Language of Baklava and Sirine in the novel Crescent as the two protagonists, the way they cope with the in-betweenness or placelessness, and the setup their identities within this arena. The experiences of those protagonists are similar to those of many immigrants to the United States. As Burnet and Palmer indicate, the family’s attitudes in the host-land tackle all aspects of ethnicity and language, including change from one generation to the next.³

However, Arab immigrants discuss their dual heritage differently; some try to assimilate the total culture, especially the second generation, instead of the transcultural attitudes of the first generation. Thus, the characters in Abu-Jaber’s writings consider that food makes them comprehend their transcultural identities.

The environments in which Arab immigrants dwell reflect substantially on their identities because of their origin and appearances. The Arabs are odd and treated as non-white within the majority of whiteness of the American society mainstream. The difference between them and the dominant group is visible; from this place, they are more subject to intensive racial prejudice. Thus, the shape of the face and the hair colour affected how the people treated the immigrants. In addition, several psychological socio-cultural forces influence the situation Arab immigrants inhabit. To put it differently, the existence of the Arabs is between a yesterday still alive inside and a today located in another country and a culture to which the term “host society” is effectively applied. How the heroes in Abu-Jaber’s writings struggle to get over the external and internal pressures vary in terms of their foodways.

The use of food as a cultural item gives the exiled and immigrant characters’ strength force. Abu-Jaber tries to preserve the link with the homeland through food to negotiate the relationship between the exile experience and home since, in a way, food functions as a mirror. Sirine, the chef in Um-Nadia's café, cooks the Arab foods to let the clients connect with their roots and help them feel more comfortable in a different culture. Some Arabs think that they are forced onto them; for example, Hanif is presented in the novel as an exiled character who addresses immigration, race, and gender. The way Han prepares the baklava with Sirine in the back kitchen gives him the energy and strength to face the problems of exile. In addition, the Arab food gives Hanif and the others the power to oppose the host-land forces and shocks, and food constitutes a link to the cultural heritage and memories that Han is not willing to get rid of.

Many of Hanif’s memories of the homeland and the past are linked to food, which implies that food has a role as a silent formative force with a close relationship to cultural identity and personal memories. Moreover, Sirine’s relationship with the café refreshes her memories and awakens her childhood memories. The café embodies a voyage into the past as she went through her parents’ old recipes and began cooking the favourite - but almost forgotten - dishes of her childhood. “She felt as if she were returning to her parents' tiny kitchen and her earliest memories.” (C) One of the vigorous events that let Hanif recollect the memories from the homeland instead of exile is preparing baklava with Sirine. In addition to Arab food names, there is significance in the practices surrounding food in the Arab world through stories and ways of eating and celebrating an event. Sirine acts when preparing the knaffea embodies the social status marker of food-related to love and sense towards one person. As Abu-Jaber states in the novel:

Some knaffea, sir? she says, and when Han looks at her, the feeling of it stirs inside her like an ache in her neck and shoulders. She has an impulse to sit and feed him by hand. (C29)

The way Sirine presents the knaffea to Hanif indicates she is in love as Um-Nadia says, “‘Are you kidding? The whole thing’s about love,’ says Um-Nadia. ‘Ask Sirine—she made the knaffea.’” (C29). Thus, food and the ways of making it and consuming it remind immigrants of the homeland and the consuming and preparing ethnic food in diaspora entail a transcultural issue. They love Sirine's food and the flavors that remind them of their homes. Furthermore, one of Han's memories from the past is when he states that he yearns for his mother's coffee, bread, and the kitchen where stories are told. Han’s experience illustrates his relationship to food; this relationship signifies the cultural identity and individual psyche. This food’s relationship in the host land embodies the same images and issues that were in the homeland.

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¹Field, Robin E. “A Prophet in Her Own Town: An Interview with Diana Abu-Jaber.” MELUS 31, no. 4 (2006) : 225.

²Victor Turner, Liminality and Communitas: Language, Meaning and Power (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969), 5.

³Jean R. Burnet and Howard Palmer, Coming Canadians: An Introduction to a history of Canada's Poeples (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988), 212.