Abstract:
This thesis examines the use of religious metaphor as it applies to food in two literary works by Diana Abu-Jaber. First, The Language of Baklava, a culinary memoir published in 2005, reveals aspects of cultural identity and memory through food and metaphor. Second, Abu-Jabers most recent novel, Birds of Paradise, explores complex family relationships enacted through metaphor. The analyses of textual representations of food rely on a theoretical framework that includes a cultural anthropological perspective, as well as a rhetorical perspective, and uses textual analysis to examine metaphor and food narratives in literature.
