Book contents
- Food and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Food and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Developments
- Part III Applications
- Chapter 13 Inebriation
- Chapter 14 Vampires, Alterity, and Strange Eating
- Chapter 15 Toast and the Familiar in Children’s Literature
- Chapter 16 Food, Humor, and Gender in Ishigaki Rin’s Poetry
- Chapter 17 Food, Hunger, and Irish Identity
- Chapter 18 Postcolonial Hungers
- Afterword
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Concepts (continued from page iii)
- References
Chapter 17 - Food, Hunger, and Irish Identity
Self-Starvation in Colum McCann’s “Hunger Strike”
from Part III - Applications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 June 2018
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Book contents
- Food and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Food and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Developments
- Part III Applications
- Chapter 13 Inebriation
- Chapter 14 Vampires, Alterity, and Strange Eating
- Chapter 15 Toast and the Familiar in Children’s Literature
- Chapter 16 Food, Humor, and Gender in Ishigaki Rin’s Poetry
- Chapter 17 Food, Hunger, and Irish Identity
- Chapter 18 Postcolonial Hungers
- Afterword
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Concepts (continued from page iii)
- References
Summary
This chapter investigates how Colum McCann’s representation of self-starvation in “Hunger Strike” expands representations of anorexia nervosa, emphasizing the political nature of all self-starvation. The novella presents a child protagonist, who uses food behaviors to negotiate changing relationships with his body, his family, and his nation as he haltingly moves toward maturity. Mara argues that the historical traces of Famine joins the religious residue of the Catholic Eucharist and the sectarian political significance of food refusal deepening the ways that food interpolates Irish culture. By highlighting the connections between language and food in identity building, the analysis reflects the complexity of McCann’s characters’ communication through food related signifiers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Food and Literature , pp. 319 - 334Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
References
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Mara, Miriam O’Kane. “The Geography of Body: Borders in Edna O’Brien’s Down by the River and Colum McCann’s ‘Sisters.’” In The Current Debate about the Irish Literary Canon: Essays Reassessing The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, edited by Thompson, Helen. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006.Google Scholar
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