Whenever you have a party, everyone always ends up in the kitchen. The kitchen is warm, inviting, the place where food is made and eaten, where drinks are poured and quaffed. It isnot necessarily a place we associate with poetry—or writing of any kind.

However, lots of writers, especially women writers, seem to be preoccupied with the space of the kitchen, what it might symbolize, and what we share there. This course is designed as an exploration of American women writers who see connections between the delights of the culinary palate and the delights of the written word. We will ask how cooking and
conversations around a soup pot might inspire creativity, constrain creativity, or represent creative activities themselves. In this course we will explore these questions through careful readings of novel, film, and possibly other works. We will look closely at imagery, language, form, characterization, and narration. We will attempt to connect these works to a broader context by considering societal expectations about women in the kitchen and the varying responses of women of different backgrounds to these expectations. In other words, we will try to discover why kitchen poets cooking up words matter in real life.

4. Book List—

Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate, # 978-0385420174

Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory, # 978-0375705045