Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
Chapter 17: "Celebration Days"
In Chapter Seventeen, “Celebration Days” in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007) Kingsolver claims that food is important in keeping family cultures together in terms of celebrations, memories, and traditions, something conventional, processed food can’t do. It is what defines and brings a family together and what creates lasting memories in the form of special recipes and funny moments in the kitchen. Kingsolver initially starts out by giving a brief update on her daughter’s, Lily, egg production business. Followed by a line break, she then begins to discuss food preparations for the Thanksgiving party she was hosting and everyone’s help in the cooking process to ultimately prepare a beautiful and delicious dinner for everyone to take pride in and enjoy. Kingsolver concludes, after a discussion on the Spanish celebration of “Day of the Dead”, by tying in this holiday with her own cultural traditions, recalling her dead ancestors and their own unique dishes and methods of cooking that Kingsolver still kept to that day. Kingsolver brings forth the memories of her dead ancestors and cultural food, in general, in order to emphasize the importance of food in bringing a family together and creating for lasting traditions, recipes, and memories. Her audience is mainly adults and parents, in encouraging them to create their own family memories and revive their culture through food.
Vocabulary:
- Balk: to stop and refuse to do something or proceed with something
- Apprised: to inform or tell someone of something
- Fanaticism: the state of being filled with great and single-minded enthusiasm
- Feigning: pretending to be affected by something
- Comestible: an item of food
- Simile: “…roughly the same as life without parole.” (pg. 280); “…mix the stuffing with their hands like a splendid mud pie.” (pg. 282)
- Humor: “…and men out in the yard pretending they still have the upper body strength for lateral passes…” (pg. 281); “I reminded Lily that our family needed eggs too…I learned, for $2.50 a dozen.” (pg. 278)
- Personification: “…Mr. Thanksgiving had been chosen while still on his feet, headed all his life for this appointment with our table.” (pg. 283)
- Metaphor: “…the Corporate Executive Officer took the situation in hand.” (pg. 280)
- Telegraphic Sentences: “This would never do.” (pg. 289); “It’s not at all spooky. It’s funny and friendly.” (pg. 290)
· What does Kingsolver regard or see the American food culture to be?
· How does Kingsolver effectively integrate her own anecdotes with outside knowledge to make her claim?
· How does food bring a sense of culture and tradition to a family?
“Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.”
