The flavour of history: Food, family and subjectivity in two Indo-European women's memoirs

Abstract

This article examines two autobiographies written by women with family connections to the former Netherlands Indies (colonial Indonesia): Marguerite Schenkhuizen's Memoirs of an Indo Woman (1993) and Karina Schaapman's Motherless (2007). Particular attention is given to the customs surrounding the preparation, consumption and distribution of food within these women's families, practices that illuminate the formation and expression of identities across generations of Indo-European migrants, and between the colonial and post-colonial periods. Studies of colonial identity often essentially focus on how aspirations for group membership are expressed. Such emphasis can exaggerate the stasis and cohesion of colonial cultures at the expense of a more nuanced analysis of the varied, sometimes contradictory range of identities that exist within specific historical contexts. To approach identity and subjectivity as related but not necessarily congruent constructs provides significant insight into how ethnic identities that were formed in a family context altered in response to twentieth century decolonisation. The memoirs examined demonstrate that subjectivities formed with reference to foodways in Indo-European (Indo) families were gendered and raced. The colonial identities that were informed by these subjectivities found new and altered expression in the post-colonial era.

In the Family Way: Bringing a Mother-Daughter (Matrilineal) Perspective to Retail Innovation and Consumer Culture

“…Family is a place where constructions of gender and the self are formulated and reproduced in the customs and practices surrounding the provisioning, preparation, consumption and distribution of food and home/housework (Valentine 2012;D'Sylva and Beagan 2011;Protschky 2009). We have highlighted the multi-generational (heritable) family to show how meaning is translated and transitioned through family signatures.…”

Identifying as "Indo": Descriptions of Food in Marguerite Schenkhuizen’s Memoirs of an Indo Woman (1993) and Anne-Gine Goemans’ Honolulu King (2015)

“…Sutton (2008Sutton ( , 2010 argues that preparing and consuming food provides a sensory link with the past. However, as Protschky (2009) and Adams (2013) show: "Food is an individual experience of taste as well as a sign of cultural distinctiveness" (Adams 2013, 240). In food memoirs the child's discovery and taste of food shape its identity (Protschky 2009, Leong-Salobir 2015.…”

“…However, as Protschky (2009) and Adams (2013) show: "Food is an individual experience of taste as well as a sign of cultural distinctiveness" (Adams 2013, 240). In food memoirs the child's discovery and taste of food shape its identity (Protschky 2009, Leong-Salobir 2015. Moreover, Protschky (2009) and Adams (2013) argue that food described in (post)colonial memoirs can present "a repertoire of historically specific subjectivities" (Adams 2013, 240).…”

A social work study on the impact of different factors on respect to women

“…Nearly three quarter of them had impulsive suicidal intention in their lives and the primary motivation was marital conflict. Therefore, we can conclude that it is important to learn more on how to increase mutual respect among families (Edwards et al, 2009;Protschky, 2009). Paranjape et al (2010) investigated family violence and associated help-seeking behavior among older African American women and determined some barriers for help them including negative encounters with physicians, lack of trust in the system and dearth of age-appropriate resources.…”