Theories of food consumption will furnish an entry point for a discussion of dining rituals in What’s Cooking?, where feasting scenes both represent and subvert gender codes as well as racial, class, and ethnic divisions.

Through the lens of foodways, I want to explore how the movie under analysis employs foodways in presenting cultural heteronormativity, ethnic and racial assimilation, and a single woman’s search for self-definition. Chadha incorporates and interweaves various culinary traditions to create an image of multicultural Los Angeles, where members of families belonging to different racial and ethnic minority groups attempt to resist social pressures and preserve their identities and values through their own renditions of Thanksgiving fare. In her movie What’s Cooking? (2000), Gurinder Chadha uses foodways as a perfect vehicle for emotional manifestations, attitudes, and dilemmas of four families living in Los Angeles. “Ethnic Diaspora Through the Kitchen: Foodways in the Postcolonial Feminist Discourse of Gurinder Chadha’s What’s Cooking?” The Moravian Journal of Literature and Film 4.2 (Fall 2013): 35–53. James McBride grew up one of twelve siblings in the all-black housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white. The novel, The Color of Water, written by James McBride follows the story of the author as he not only discovers his own identity but also explores his eccentric mothers past.

The color of water novel