Food Narrative – Fiqws 10103 portfolio

Fairy Food-mother

A tray with a cup of pudding, cup of apple juice, a covered plate, and some utensils sit in front of me. When the cover is removed the plate underneath contains beets, mashed potatoes, and baked chicken breast. I take a fork and scoop some beets and mashed potato onto a spoon which I then feed to my great aunt. “Gu Pau is it good?” I ask her, “Mmm,” she replied and giggled. I ease up and prepare another combination of beets and potatoes, I’m glad that I can be here for my great aunt to allow her to feel secure as she used to do for me.

My Great aunt whom my family called “Gu Pau,” was kind and understanding, she had lived in Flushing, Queens far from the schools I’ve attended in Manhattan and farther from my home in Staten Island. She’d probably hurt a fly, but not any human person, if my sister or I accidently hit her she would say in a demeaning manner, “Ow, you hurt me, are you happy?” When I was younger, my family often went with her to restaurants around Queens consuming beef noodle soups, seafood pancakes, oyster pancakes, soup dumplings, mostly anything of the East Asian variety. We also often had takeout and brought it to Gu Pau’s studio apartment in an alley. When it was dark, the alley was a little unsettling, but I liked eating takeout at her place and enjoying the privacy as I could sit on a couch and comfortably enjoy the viscose texture of an oyster pancake or slurp down savory noodles. The fact that Gu Pau lived in the place made me feel more comfortable, because if she could be happy in a less than ideal place why couldn’t I.

Gu Pau lived alone and over time she changed, she was still kind and understanding, but she started forgetting a lot. One time my uncle was driving her home and she forgotten where her apartment was, and they did circles around her neighborhood. We then found out that she had dementia, so we tried to find ways to take care of her more closely. We went to Taiwan to see if any relatives could take care of her, but they found Gu Pau to be difficult, and the same happened when my mom and sister tried to take care of her at home. Eventually, we found a nursing home that Gu Pau could be taken care in, my family a little relieved, but also felt a little like we abandoned her.

My mother checks on Gu Pau weekly, because the first weeks Gu Pau wouldn’t eat or cooperate so when my mother come to see Gu Pau, she feed her. I occasionally go with my mother and help with feeding Gu Pau. When I feed her, I remembered how we had eaten as a family at restaurants and at her apartment and how she would facilitate my eating by telling a dish was too hot or that a combination would taste better together like a fairy food-mother. However, nowadays I facilitate her eating and would try to make sure she eats all she can, I can’t really help her taste test food as I’m a bacterial hazard.

Whenever I go to visit my great auntie, I remember the person she used to be, how she was understanding and logical, and it made me a little upset that she wouldn’t be able to fully comprehend who my siblings or I are right now. She most likely has forgotten or doesn’t have coherent enough thoughts to recollect that we used to eat at or from Asian restaurants in Queens or how we’d get takeout for her apartment. Now she only remembers or has the routine of people feeding her. I just hope that I could be the same person she was for me at a dinner table.

While writing this essay I commonly ran into blocks where I did not have the next scene in my head, and I tended to focus on details that were extraneous. Because of the difficulties I had the rhetorical situations may be less clear than I originally thought. My difficulties may have resulted from my disconnection from food in this narrative specifically, I didn’t really identify an emotion to food. The outline I started with became less relevant as I moved and changed paragraphs to improve clarity.

The genre my essay had to be was a food narrative and that maybe unclear from a first glance at it. The moments revolve about dinners at two different times, but otherwise attention is more focused on the background information. In my essay my stance was just my thesis statement and the tone that should have accompanied my stance was disassociated as I was focused more on the moment than on its connection to my thesis.

The exigence behind writing these specific food moments for the narrative essay was that they were the most personal connection I could have associated with food, so I felt that I exaggerated the importance of food and used it to display change. The purpose of the way I wrote was to have a clear thesis statement and to easily conclude the essay since the flashbacks served as evidence while also revealing the thesis within the food moment at the nursing home.

I started my essay in a recent event then to a flashback of a moment at a dinner then back to a more current time, I did this so that I can more easily have a thesis statement and to explain the change that occurred. I also attempted subversions to keep my audience engaged so when in the first paragraph I write about the motions of what sounded like getting ready to eat to then feeding someone else. The background I included about my great aunt was included to work towards engaging the reader and I tried using specific details when describing food. When I switched back from the past to more current events, I concluded with a version of the thesis statement. I think the introduction, conclusion, and body paragraphs are recognizable.

The Peer review that took place in class was helpful in that I felt assured by reading other people’s works as content I could compare to or possibly improve my own essay with. While reading other people’s essays I saw phrases I wanted to replicate specifically for my own essay such as tone. I also witnessed examples of coherent plots and ways to structure. I didn’t feel that the comments peers made on my paper were that helpful as they were less substantive than I was expecting, they weren’t as constructive and left me a little confused and worried.

The CLOs I think I’ve accomplished are exploring rhetorical situations, developing strategies such as outlining and peer review, and recognizing rhetorical terms. I felt that I had a hard time since the references I had was just memories and I do not have passionate events around food.