Text: "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by E.J. Levy
Levy effectively brings in historical context (ie Julia Child's cooking show, the feminist movement, Watergate, Vietnam, and anxiety over oil prices) to help her establish associations between traditional family roles, her mom's culinary quirks, and her parents' marriage. Levy focuses in part on her mom's cooking of Child's recipes as a distraction from compromised desire (as Levy sees it). According to Levy, her mom--"widely read . . . an accomplished pianist and a gifted painter [who] speaks French and Czech, [and] is knowledgeable in art and history, physics, physiology, and philosophy"--had her "enormous ambitions . . . channeled by her marriage into a narrow course" (294-295).
Levy writes that her mom "was of that generation of women caught in the sexual crossfire of women's liberation, who knew enough to probe for their desires, but not enough to practice them" (291). Levy imagined or deduced that her mom was only waiting for the right moment to insist on her own liberation. She juxtaposes her mom's submissiveness to convention with her own schism against social conformity. Levy hints that although her mom never left (Levy had always expected she would), she did eventually throw in her apron, opting years later, for example, to order "a large, squat, hatbox-shaped vegetable torte with marinara sauce" in place of the traditional Thanksgiving turkey.
What impressed me about this piece is the way Levy chronicles the relationship between gustatory choices and the feminist movement, and ultimately her mom's subtle shifts in her role as the family's hash slinger.
Prompt:
Write about a family food tradition (or lack of) that embarrassed you when you had a friend over. Dig for a moment during your adolescent or teenage years.
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