Malaysian Food Culture as a Communal Identity Marker in Shih-Li Kow’s The Sum of Our Follies

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2022-2204-18

Keywords:

multicultural, food spaces, urban, novel, literature, Malaysia

Abstract

Food is deeply rooted in cultural traditions and has been a ubiquitous and prominent element in cultural productions and narratives of cultures around the world. In literature, food is often employed literally and metaphorically to evoke the senses or communicate meaning about the identity, culture, or emotions of people. This article examines the connection between food and cultural identity in multicultural Malaysia as represented in the novel, The Sum of Our Follies by Malaysian author, Shih-Li Kow. It aims to identify how food is utilized in the novel to define a communal cultural identity for the characters in a fictional, small town of Lubok Sayong, Malaysia. Textual analysis of food references in the novel is employed to interpret the connection between food and cultural identity and draw parallels between the author-defined social reality in the novel and the Malaysian context. Anderson’s (2006) theory of the Imagined Community is applied to understanding communal identity as constructed through food and food spaces. The analysis revealed that food and food spaces are used as an indicator of a community’s geographical and physical environment, peer network, ethnicity, nationality and social class. Shih-Li Kow’s construction of social reality in this novel shed lights on the significant role of food culture as an identity maker for communities in Malaysia. The novel also captures the complexity of the Malaysian urban and small town sociocultural and socioeconomic divide through the lens of food culture. 

Author Biographies

Wan Putri Nurlisa Jaafar, National University of Malaysia

Wan Putri Nurlisa is pursuing a PhD in Postcolonial Literature in English at the  Centre for Research in Language and Linguistics, National University of Malaysia. Her research interests are in the areas of culture, identity and food narratives in literary and cultural texts.

Melissa Shamini Perry, National University of Malaysia

 Melissa Shamini Perry (PhD Melb) is a Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the MA Postcolonial Literature in English at the National University of Malaysia. Her teaching and research interests are in social semiotics, multimodality, literature, media and cultural narratives, material culture and transculturalism. She is currently heading a research project on Food and Transculturalism in Malaysia funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education Fundamental Research Grant Scheme. 

Nor Fariza Mohd Nor, National University of Malaysia

Nor Fariza Mohd Nor (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Research in Language and Linguistics, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Her area of interests are critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and digital humanities. She is currently the Chair of the Centre for Research in Language and Linguistics.

Ravichandran Vengadasamy, National University of Malaysia

Ravichandran Vengadasamy (PhD) is a senior lecturer and the Head of the Postgraduate Programme at the Centre for Research in Language and Linguistics, National University of Malaysia. His research and teaching interests include Malaysian literature in English, postcolonial literature, cognitive and literary stylistics and academic writing.

Pauline Pooi Yin Leong, Sunway University

Associate Professor Dr. Pauline Pooi Yin Leong researches in the areas of free speech, new media, and political communication. She is the author of Malaysian Politics in the New Media Age: Implications on the Political Communication Process, a book published by Springer. She completed a six-month visiting fellowship with ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore under the Media, Technology, and Society programme (2021/2022).

Loo Hong Chuang, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Dr Loo Hong Chuang is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Creative Industries (FCI) at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR). Trained in media and cultural studies at the University of Melbourne as well as a continuous interest in researching ethnicity and nationalism in multi-ethnic societies, he is drawn to ethnographic methods and is actively involved in collecting visual ethnographic works as data. He is a recipient of the 2022 Taiwan Fellowship.

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Published

2022-11-30

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 4 (2022): November 2022

Section

Articles

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