KPU arts dean releases new book on food in Canadian literature
Shelley Boyd dives into the cultural significance of dishes and ingredients in Canadian Literary Fare
Shelley Boyd, dean of the faculty of arts at KPU, co-wrote Canadian Literary Fare, a new book that explores how food is represented in Canadian literature. (Submitted)
The dean of the Faculty of Arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University released a new book on May 15, exploring how different foods are represented in Canadian literature and their cultural importance.
Shelley Boyd co-wrote Canadian Literary Fare with McGill University professor Nathalie Cooke, a project that began online in 2014.
“Initially it started as a blog, so we were trying to find food scenes in Canadian literature and kind of write about them and sometimes cook about them as well,” Boyd says.
“Then eventually we decided we had enough material and we thought ‘It wants to be a book.’”
As authors don’t have to feed their characters since they’re not alive, Boyd finds it’s worth paying attention to when they do.
“In some books you never see the character eat or you never see the character prepare food or even purchase, select, or grow food,” she says.
“So when an author decides to put that into their book, usually there is some significance to it or some meaning. They’re very purposeful in terms of putting that in.”
Boyd and Cooke use the term “food voice” in the book, which is the non-verbal communication a character or speaker is expressing through their food choices.
The book features 13 sections on the symbolism behind different foods, ranging from butter tarts to maple syrup, in Canadian fiction, poetry, and plays.
The second part of Canadian Literary Fare touches on the social and economic representations of foods, which includes Kraft Dinner macaroni and cheese, a product Canadians eat more than any country per capita.
While Boyd encountered lots of references to Kraft Dinner in Canadian literature, they are often brief.
“What I started to learn as I gathered these examples is often, Kraft Dinner … is kind of a quick shorthand for an author to signal about something else that’s going on in the story that’s quite complex.”
She found Kraft Dinner is mentioned in literature to reflect poverty through its affordability, as well as colonialism.
“A lot of Indigenous writers would talk about Kraft Dinner in terms of loss of their traditional food ways or access to those food ways, and also poverty,” Boyd says.
Canadian Literary Fare includes research into bison. For example, poet Marilyn Dumont’s The Pemmican Eaters collection touches on how bison provides a sense of culture, identity, and connection to the land.
The book also includes analysis on bannock’s significance in Canadian literature, especially in Eden Robinson’s supernatural mystery novel Monkey Beach.
In that novel, one character says, “I’m fried bread,” to highlight her Indigenous identity after the nuns at her residential school fed the children sweets to distance them from their culture.
Canadian Literary Fare also explores identity through single ingredients, like how poet Fred Wah writes about ginger because of its connection to his father who was raised in China.
Boyd hopes people will consider food voices in different settings after reading the book.
“I hope it whets their appetite for more Canadian literature and looking at food in those texts,” she says.
“And perhaps also will encourage the reader to think about food in their own lives and how they express themselves through food and how those around them do and to sort of listen more carefully for what that expression is saying.”
