Food as function and food as figure: Cultural translation and cultural hybridity in A change of skies, Love and vertigo and Nina’s heavenly delights

Abstract

Food is a major concern in popular culture and in literary studies at present and there are numerous novels, movies, and TV-shows that focus on food and its various functions – literary, cultural, and social. Food, which is a highly politicised subject, is one way in which cultural translation takes place as it is used to create an understanding of cultural transfer processes and their implications.This paper aims to explore how representations of food accentuate the theme of migration and serve as sites for cultural translation in A change of skies by Yasmine Gooneratne (1991), Love and vertigo by Hsu-Ming Teo (2000), and Nina’s heavenly delights by Pratibha Parmar (2006). In addition to representing the source and target cultures, food illustrates the immigrant’s position in-between cultures, thus emphasising cultural hybridity, in particular through the fusion of food from the source and the target cultures.