During the famine that befell China following the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, hunger was a major affliction for the individuals undergoing reform in the labor camps. Food – in terms of procurement, consumption, or just discursive recollection – was a central issue in the prisoners’ lives and, as a consequence, descriptions of meals and eating practices are a recurring presence in modern Chinese literary texts that revolve around carceral experiences. This contribution investigates three literary works that reconstruct personal experiences of imprisonment by way of eating: Wang Ruowang’s Hunger Trilogy (1980), Zhang Xianliang’s Mimosa (1984), and Yang Xianhui’s Chronicles of Jiabiangou (2003). In these texts, food becomes a privileged perspective through which look at how personal and collective memories are re-appropriated and re-elaborated, as well as to analyze how narratives of the past are consumed and produced.
Stockholm University, Sweden - ORCID: 0000-0002-1355-9597
Chapter Title
Eat to remember. Gastronomical reconfigurations of hunger and imprisonment in contemporary Chinese literature
Authors
Serena De Marchi
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-506-6.12
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2021
Copyright Information
© 2021 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Food issues 食事
Book Subtitle
Interdisciplinary Studies on Food in Modern and Contemporary East Asia
Editors
Miriam Castorina, Diego Cucinelli
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
202
Publication Year
2021
Copyright Information
© 2021 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-506-6
ISBN Print
978-88-5518-505-9
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-5518-506-6
eISBN (epub)
978-88-5518-507-3
Series Title
Studi e saggi
Series ISSN
2704-6478
Series E-ISSN
2704-5919