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CONSUMING the OTHER: SUBVERTING DESIRE THROUGH CONSUMPTION a Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Fis San Francisco State Universi

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CONSUMING the OTHER: SUBVERTING DESIRE THROUGH CONSUMPTION a Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Fis San Francisco State Universi CONSUMING THE OTHER: SUBVERTING DESIRE THROUGH CONSUMPTION A Thesis submitted to the faculty of f i s San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of U)\% the requirements for £ ^ the Degree Master of Arts In English: Literature by Joshua Michael Miyashiro Lindo San Francisco, California May 2018 Copyright by Joshua Michael Miyashiro Lindo 2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read Consuming the Other: Subverting Desire through Consumption by Joshua Michael Miyashiro Lindo, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Literature at San Francisco State University. Gitanjali Shahani, Ph.D. Associate Professor Geoffrey Green, D. Professor CONSUMING THE OTHER: SUBVERTING DESIRE THROUGH CONSUMPTION Joshua Michael Miyashiro Lindo San Francisco, California 2018 The Japanese-American post-war novel is a text of transition between both Japanese and American identities. It chronicles the internal and external trauma of coping with living in a state of constant displacement between both Japanese and American identities as a result of internment. What did it mean to be an American of Japanese descent? Can an individual be Japanese and American at the same time? Novels such as John Okada’s No-No Boy take up these questions of identity and negotiate their complex nature through representations of orality. Scenes revolving around pleasurable stimulation of the mouth (for example eating, drinking, smoking, verbal aggressions, etc.), convey the anxieties surrounding these questions of identity and show how the Japanese-American community traverse this space. My thesis will examine orality through oral fixations and will explain how oral fixations act as a method of coping with internment. In doing so, I aim to reveal how becoming an American requires the individuals from non-European ethnic communities to reject their ethnic identities. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. Chair, Thesis Committee Date PREFACE AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my gratitude to my professors on my advisory board - Dr. Gitanjali Shahani and Dr. Geoffrey Green - for helping me develop my interests in food studies and psychoanalysis and for challenging me to think outside of the box. In addition, I would like to thank my graduate colleagues for the sleepless nights writing papers together, literary debates over a glass of wine, the laughs at literary jokes and absurd amount of food puns and consistent pep talks. I also want to thank my family who has always been supportive of my endeavors. More specifically, I thank my mother and my father - without your guidance and encouragement, I would not be where I am today. You both, as my father says, keep me “solid.” Lastly, I thank my grandparents for showing me that cooking and sharing food together is a form of love. Your recipes, though not on paper, will always be with me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Digging In ............................................................ 1 “You are what you eat”.............................................................. 2 A Matcha Made in Heaven..............................................................................................4 You Kiss Your Mother with that Mouth?......................................................................8 A Place at the Table................................................................... 11 Chapter 1: Sandwiched between Binaries................................................................................12 Mouthing-Off...................................................................................................................16 Broken Bentos................................................................................................................. 20 Hamburger Dreams.........................................................................................................30 No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk....................................................................................37 Eating Away the Troubles........................................................ 45 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................48 Coda: All that’s Leftover............................................................................................................51 References..................................................................................................................................... 58 1 Introduction: Digging In Food is never simply food. It consists of ingredients, requires preparation form raw to cooked, requires an individual prepare the food itself, and even includes societal rules of commensality that structure the way we eat. At the same time, food is more than its components - food is memory, food is culture, food is gendered, food is identity1. Like any other novel, article, poem, or song, food itself is a stage where our anxieties about ourselves and others materialize. Food becomes culturally codified, gendered, worshipped, taboo, accepted, and rejected. As a result, there is meaning behind the materials that we consume, digest, incorporate, and expel whether this process be one of choice of whether these foods are forced down our throats. It is this process of understanding the codes and meaning embodied in food and consumption that I will address in this thesis with a particular emphasis on food’s representation in 20th century Asian-American literature, specifically John Okada’s novel No-No Boy. In this thesis, I examine the nature of orality in John Okada’s No-No Boy and locate them within scenes of consumption throughout the novel. To do so, I examine the specific roles that food plays as a cultural signifier, consumption as an attempt to incorporate these signifiers and the ways in which food and consumption help individuals reconstruct their identities in the novel. More specifically, I analyze how Okada’s protagonist, Ichiro Yamada, uses food to negotiate the trauma of Japanese internment and how this process manifests itself as an oral fixation. In delving further into this field, I hope to add to the ongoing discussion regarding food and identity formation in Freudian psychoanalysis in an 1 I would like to thank one of my mentors, Dr. Gitanjali Shahani, for helping me come to these conclusions about food and identity. 2 attempt to answer this question - is there a way to be not one, nor the other, but both Asian and American? This question, amongst others, will be the primary one guiding this project. This introduction will briefly survey the field of food studies and will consist of four sections. The first section seeks to introduce food studies as a field and establish the connection between food and identity. It aims to address why food studies is important. The next section connects food with ethnic identities and also with food’s importance in Asian-American literature. More importantly, this section focuses on establishing why I chose Japanese-American literature and out of its limited selection, why I decided to analyze Okada’s No-No Boy. My third section provides an overview of orality in Freudian psychoanalysis and the Oedipus Complex with a focus on the boy’s relationship to his mother and her breast as the first source of nourishment. Lastly, my final section returns to the question of food studies as important by contemplating it as one of the most interdisciplinary approaches to academic study. In organizing my introduction into four parts, I hope to provide a more focused lens of the approach that I will take in my thesis chapter. “You are what you eat”: Why Food Studies? One of the many repetitive habits gained from studying the codes and meaning in food is undoubtedly a (dis)tasteful use of food puns and a fondness of overly quoted food scholars. Perhaps chief among these cliche lines is the idea that “you are what you eat,” a corruption of a line coined originally by gastronomist Jean Brillat-Savarin in his ever famous and routinely referenced quote “tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are” (Brillat-Savarin 12). Perhaps it is for a lack of newer quotes that immediately brings Brillat-Savarin to mind or maybe it is because his quote is quintessential when referring to 3 food and identity. Brillat-Savarin’s quote implies the literal - the items we consume construct our bodies and ensure its survival and functionality. The pleasure that we derive in consuming is a result of “the actual and direct sensation of a need being satisfied,” explains Brillat-Savarin (161). But at the same time, his quote implies that foods have coded meanings beyond the physiological. Brillat-Savarin’s quote also suggests that we consider all aspects of food beyond the “what” of it. Who made the food? Where did it come from? How was it prepared? When was it created? Most importantly, why was the food made, prepared, harvested, traded, consumed? The “what” of food is simply the beginning. Food and identity is a complicated affair that involves looking into food as representative of the identities that we desire to consume and incorporate. As Roland Barthes argues, food is “a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations and behavior” that help construct the way that we perceive ourselves and others, our internal and our external worlds (Barthes 171). As a system
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