Recognition and Transculturalization: Foodways in Cynthia Shearer S the Celestial Jukebox

Abstract

Food is central to the sense of identity and imbued with regional identity. Recently, scholars from different disciplines have focused more on foodways and its relation to regional identity and culture. With its rich and diverse food culture, the U.S. South is like a mosaic of foodways. Southern spaces, culturally and spatially reconstructed through global movements and multiculturalism, have been constantly introduced new food habits and cultural experiences since the arrival of the first immigrants to the region. The food culture that the immigrants brought to the U.S. South contributed significantly to reconstruction of cultural identity because immigration introduces possibilities of change in food and eating habits. Within this context, this paper attempts to analyze the integral role of the foodways in Cynthia Shearer's 2005 novel The Celestial Jukebox, and discuss how foodways and immigration, through dialogic character of the foodways, reconstruct southern identity with possibilities of diverse, multicultural, and more global South that escapes from biracial, exceptional, and monolithic structure.