Food Bonds

As I was reading the second half of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner I began to understand that the narrator’s family uses food as a source of bonding. The family trips to Ponderosa are one example of this. At home each family member seems to operate on their own schedule and they rarely make time to spend as a family. The children avoid their father and their father seems to avoid the house. Each person has a different daily ritual, their trips to Ponderosa, however, were family trips. Throughout the book, the family struggles to form emotional bonds with one another. The narrator especially feels detached from her family members. She offers limited emotional insight into the lives of her family. I was troubled at first as to why she never really fully explained a character and instead only gave small snippets of their lives. I now believe she writes like this because it is all she knew. Throughout the second part of the book, the family dynamic becomes a little more clear. While reading, I began to understand that her deepest connection to her family was through food. Food was the one thing their family was forced to come together over. Another example of using food to bond and be with one another comes when Rosa tells the children about her divorce with their father. Although they spent a long time at the restaurant, the narrator tells of no deep conversation and instead describes the mess they made with ketchup and sweet n’ low. The narrator struggles with her identity throughout the book and attempts to form an identity through food. She attempts to mimic eating patterns of her classmates and constantly mentions that if her step-sister liked something, she would try to like it too. Bich looks up to Crissy. Although she begins to question her behavior as they get older, she still wishes to be like Crissy. One way she tries to do that is by mimicing the food Crissy eats. Despite her efforts, Bich does not possess the self-confidence Crissy displays and she cannot imitate the way Crissy dresses or does her hair, she can, however, copy the things she eats. Although she tries other ways, Bich seems to see food as her greatest chance to form a strong bond with her step-sister. After Bich goes off to college she explains that her father’s way of asking how she was doing consisted of him asking, “‘You want to eat something?’” Bich’s father detaches himself from the family. He does not seem to possess a strong relationship with any of the children, he does however ensure that there is food on the table. Bich grows to appreciate the work her father and Rosa did to make sure the children had their necessities. She did not grow up with a strong emotional family dynamic and this upset her at times; food, however, was always on the table at night and the family used that food to create bonds with each other.