The essay If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? by Geeta Kothari has a less blunt but subtle ring that our previous assignment, Living Like Weasels possessed.
Kothari is an Indian girl growing up in a culture that has different food selections than back home in India. However her parents are not very ecstatic about the new ideas of meat. They bend a little on certain foods, but not many. Understandably enough, her parents want to keep the family’s past in the present, but why don’t they expand their horizons for their daughters? Yes they did not have such delicacies in India, but their two daughters are growing up in a different time and place. The family’s interest in their culture’s food is a metaphor for the changes in society and trying to find one’s place. As Kothari tries to respect her family, she still wants to eat more American food. However as she gets older, she turns out more and more like her parents with wanting to keep recipes in the family as they were when she first was presented with them. This goes a bit beyond food; Kothari really means her entire culture. She describes how she fears her husband may leave her, and sounds as if she is an alien, but it’s just her background and cultures that differ from his. The essay has a scattered timeline in order to not only grasp the reader’s attention, but to also really highlight the changes Kothari goes through. If the author had written the essay in sequential order, the changes would have been subtle and the reader may not have noticed how much Kothari’s food choices change. By plotting the timeline all over, it is more obvious, like black next to white versus a gradation of grays in-between.
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