Abstract
A debut novel by a second-generation American author with an Indian background, Burnt Sugar (originally published in India in 2019 under the title The
Girl in White Cotton), is an exhilarating journey through memories and relationships of a daughter and her mother. Interconnecting past with present, mixing Texas families with those residing in Indian Pune, Avni Doshi continuously brings forward the theme of food which, as this paper will try to demonstrate, serves both as a device and as a lens but almost never as a silent setting. Foods in the novel take numerous forms such as remedies, symbols of care, signifiers of decay, and marks of foreignness, however, most importantly, the author relies on food items to emphasize bodily functions, dependances and weaknesses. By focusing on how meals in the text are capable of provoking dementia while also pushing a breastfeeding mother to submit to the dietary rules imposed by her mother-in-law, this essay attempts to highlight the crucial role of food in Burnt Sugar. This article further insists that food habits often take control of the characters, for instance, making a protagonist, who had to starve in a boarding school, to keep searching for more in every part of her adult life, as if always containing the inner hunger. To uncover and explore the entangled ties between characters and their cooking, eating (or not eating) and feeding habits and rituals this paper relies on works dedicated to various aspects of food studies such as Food, National Identity and Nationalism by Ronald Ranta and Atsuko Ichijo and The Hunger Artists Starving, Writing and Imprisonment by Maud Ellman. Finally, given the diasporic aspect of the author and her writing, this essay brings in texts by Sara Suleri and Zadie Smith.