Is that soul in my bowl?: food facultad, cultural starvation, Chicana literature, and a SA chef

In this thesis, I will explore how food and foodways between the cook/diner dyad engage the concept of food facultad as an additional aspect of Gloria Anzaldúa's notion of facultad in her foundational Chicana feminist text, Borderlands: The New Mestiza. I consider the individual producing food from an enlightened position and her/his ability to affect the person consuming her/his assembled dish. I employ Laura Esquivel's text, Like Water for Chocolate, as a work that embodies the notion of food facultad and the manner in which this concept operates. I then explore the concept of cultural starvation as a way in which culture is employed to separate the individual from her culture, as well as the individual employment of the notion to disengage from her culture through a feminist positionality. I examine this notion through poems by Chicanas Ana Castillo and Barbara Curiel Brinson. The purpose of this study is to examine how food is engaged by these authors to extend the foodways beyond sustenance and cultural signifiers.