AustLit
Eating One’s Way Through History : Food and Politics in Manuka Wijesinghe’s Monsoons and Potholes
single work
Issue Details:
First known date:
2011...
2011
Eating One’s Way Through History : Food and Politics in Manuka Wijesinghe’s Monsoons and Potholes
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This paper consists of an analysis of Monsoons and Potholes (2006), the first
novel by Sri Lankan playwright Manuka Wijesinghe. Attention is paid to the ways in
which the text articulates relations between personal stories, food, history and politics.
Food plays a central role in some novels published in the last years by Sri Lankan
authors, as is the case, for instance, with Yasmine Gooneratne's A Change of Skies
(1984) and Mary Ann Mohanraj's Bodies in Motion (2005). Both these works elaborate
metaphors of identity through the dominant trope of food-encompassing cooking and
the rituals of consumption. In Monsoons and Potholes, food accompanies and illustrates
the autobiographical account of a Sri Lankan youngster born in the early 1960s, and
revisits the first twenty years in her life together with the socio-political up and downs
in her country. While it is a novel which to a great extent draws on metaphors of myth
and history, scenes of food and eating appear consistently throughout the narration,
which contribute in providing a down-to-earth (and highly satirical) version of the life
of the Sinhala upper-middle classes during the period. These images of food (and the
sets of rituals, beliefs and constrictions around it) are exploited by the author with the
aim to explore, understand and denounce the historical process which precipitated Sri
Lanka, at the beginning of the 1980s, "on the road to nowhere".' (Author's abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 2 Mar 2017 12:13:44
Eating One’s Way Through History : Food and Politics in Manuka Wijesinghe’s Monsoons and Potholes
Coolabah
Subjects:
- A Change of Skies 1991 single work novel
- Relative Merits : A Personal Memoir of the Bandaranaike Family of Sri Lanka 1986 single work autobiography
Export this record