‘Food Stories’ Reading Group
Wednesday, 5 November 2025, 5pm–6.30pm
Schwarzman Centre, Seminar Room 56
All welcome
This term’s reading group invites you to think about food in and via narratives. We will be looking at excerpts from The Gastronomical Me (1943), the acclaimed memoir by American ‘poet of the appetites’ M. F. K. Fisher, a chapter from The Joy Luck Club (1989), Amy Tan’s classic exploration of growing up Chinese American, and Prasanthi Ram’s short story ‘The Panasonic’, about an Indian Singaporean family on holiday, from her award-winning collection Nine Yard Sarees (2023). These texts are certain to spark lively discussion about, among other topics, the relationship between food and identity, food’s place in childhood memory, family dynamics, and how we experience food through writing.
If you enjoy reading and talking about stories about food, this reading group is for you! Click here to access the texts.
References:
Fisher, M. F. K. “The Measure of My Powers 1919.” In The Gastronomical Me, 11–17. 1943. Reprint, London: Daunt Books, 2017.
—. “The Measure of My Powers 1919-1927.” In The Gastronomical Me, 18–23. 1941. Reprint, London: Daunt Books, 2017.
Ram, Prasanthi. “The Panasonic.” In Nine Yard Sarees: A Short Story Cycle, 13–18. Singapore: Ethos Books, 2023.
Tan, Amy. “Jing-mei Woo: Best Quality.” In The Joy Luck Club, 4th ed., 194–207. 1989. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
If you enjoy reading and talking about stories about food, this reading group is for you!
Please follow us on X (@OxCFSNetwork), Bluesky (@oxcfsnetwork.bsky.social), and Instagram (@criticalfoodstudiesox)
Critical Food Studies Network is part of TORCH Student Networks
