Picture this. A couple sits down to dinner. They’ve just fought earlier that day but as they sit down to eat, one partner spoons a serving of the other’s favorite dish onto a plate and a quiet peace falls over the table. Not quite an apology, but something like it. In another home, a family places the sweet bread grandpa always loved on his ofrenda, hoping the scent might guide him back to them. And in a small apartment somewhere, a young girl juggles an iPad and a mixing bowl as she tries to recreate her mother’s cooking, trying to capture generations of culture with imperfect skills.

As the holidays ramp up, I’m reminded once again of something: food is far more than just fuel and nutrients. It is a bridge between people, a bridge between cultures. It’s a way of connecting with ourselves and our emotions. This is part of what makes food such a powerful tool in storytelling. Some of my favorite books use food as a narrative device to drive the characters and the story forward. Food creates a rich atmosphere that appeals to the senses, cluing the reader into what the characters experience. My own writing has been inspired by several works that understand food’s unique ability to add layers to a story. These books use food in storytelling to express everything from love to identity and grief.

Food as Healing

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is the book that initially inspired me to dive deeper into this topic. Though not a work of fiction but a memoir, Zauner makes food a central point in a story about her relationship with her mother and her grief. For Zauner, food and cooking serve two main purposes. Food has cultural significance that ties her to her roots. It was also her mother’s way of expressing love, and now that her mother is gone, it is a way for Zauner to remember that love fondly. The book’s title alone gives away the significant role that food plays in the story. H Mart, a Korean supermarket that sells foods from across the Asian continent, is a safe haven for Zauner.

As an Asian American, she walks the aisles, searching for familiar ingredients from family holidays and foods reminiscent of her mother’s cooking. H Mart also provides a sense of companionship that other grocery stores cannot. Zauner says the people in the store are there for the same reason. “We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy.” Once her mother is gone, the aisles full of food represent pieces of her mother. All the tastes, textures, and smells bring back memories. By buying these ingredients and using them, Zauner picks up pieces of herself that she lost over years of watching her mother’s suffering. She recreates her mother’s cooking, however imperfectly, and revives their relationship one step at a time. Food is Zauner’s healing.

Food as Shame

Though food can be healing, it can also be a source of shame. For many people and for many characters, food represents something that they lack. In Crying in H Mart, Zauner feels shame at her inexperience in cooking the dishes her mother was so well-versed in. She stumbles around the kitchen in a poor imitation of her mother’s skill many times before beginning to feel comfortable and accept the imperfections in her recreations.

In many ways, Esperanza of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros experiences similar shame surrounding food. In a story made up of vignettes, one stands out. The episode titled “Rice Sandwich” shows Esperanza’s desire to fit in. She begs her mother to let her eat lunch in the canteen like all the other kids for once. When her mother finally caves, Esperanza has to take a rice sandwich to lunch because they have no lunch meat. To Esperanza, eating in the lunchroom is a norm that she wishes to be a part of. She already feels isolated from the other students due to her class and her ethnicity. Not being able to share in mealtime with everyone else only emphasizes how different she is from the others.

The rice sandwich is Cisneros’s way of expressing Esperanza’s differences and the shame they bring her. Her family can’t afford lunch meat like the other kids so her sandwich is filled with rice. This is also a way of visualizing how Esperanza is quite literally sandwiched between two cultures, two worlds. She has her Mexican culture at home, but she desires to fit in with the dominant American culture she sees around her. Everything from her name to the food she eats is a reminder that she doesn’t fit in with everyone else. It isn’t until the end of the novel, that Esperanza is able to begin to reject this shame, and even then, there is still work to be done.

Food as Magic

So far we’ve seen the power of food manifest as both healing and shame, but what if food had real power? In Laura Esquivel’s book Like Water for Chocolate, food is central to the magical realism aspects of the story. The main character Tita finds solace from her mother’s abuse and the strict gender roles of her society in the kitchen. Her connection to this space begins at birth when, as her mother chops onions, she begins to cry in the womb and force her mother into labor. From that point on, cooking becomes a way to express her feelings, emotions that physically manifest in the food she cooks.

Each chapter begins with one of Tita’s recipes. This solidifies food as a central theme in the novel and gives readers a chance to connect more deeply with the characters by trying the recipes and bringing the novel to life in their own kitchens. Throughout the story, Tita’s emotions manifest through her cooking and influence those around her. When she cries into the cake she prepares for Rosaura and Pedro’s wedding, she effectively ruins the wedding. Her sadness “infects” those who eat the cake, giving them a sort of literal and emotional food poisoning. This is a moment when Tita loses control over her emotions and the power they have in her cooking.

However, there are also moments when Tita uses the power of food to her advantage. When she is forbidden from interacting with Pedro, her cooking becomes her only way of expressing her love. When Pedro eats her food, he is able to feel Tita’s love as if it were his own. They bond over food as their little secret. While for others who taste her dishes, Tita’s love for Pedro manifests as an excess of salt, Pedro feels the emotion as intended. In this way, food is Tita’s way of defying the expectations placed on her and regaining her agency.