Mandarin Peelings and Lola's Tinola

Abstract

Cultural food narratives and the pedagogical process to initiate such narratives offer meaning to our food memories, nostalgias and reminiscences. We theorize subjectivity and belonging through a performative process of “narrative conversation” enacted between student and teacher as co-learners seeking to dwell deeply among the interstices of language and silence, subjectivity and culture, self and Other. While we acknowledge the risk for exploiting the Other in our longing for connection, we propose a living food studies curriculum as a critical anti-colonial intervention that attends to inarticulate spaces, subjectivities and myriad contradictions. The narrative conversations we have with each other help us understand who we are and where we are coming from—a relational epistemology. These are significant conversations because they are risky and personal; much is at stake, but mostly our understanding of difference, originality, and an acknowledgment of diversity for those of us learning, teaching and being Canadian.

Keywords:

• cultural food narratives pedagogy subjectivity anti-colonial relational learning