PDF Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books

By Nelson James on Thursday, May 16, 2019

PDF Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books



Download As PDF : Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books

Download PDF Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books

Curry is a dish that doesn't quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn't properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta's Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford's Heat, Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters. Following in the footsteps of Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands, Curry cracks open anew the staid narrative of an authentically Indian diasporic experience. 

Naben Ruthnum won the Journey Prize for his short fiction, has been a National Post books columnist, and has written books and cultural criticism for the Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, and the Walrus. His crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Joyland, and his pseudonym Nathan Ripley's first novel appeared in 2018. Ruthnum lives in Toronto.


PDF Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books


"I liked this unexpected exploration of what it means to be a “brown” writer in America. It changed my romantic notions of Indian curry while showing that all skin colors experience a sense of displacement on some level."

Product details

  • Audible Audiobook
  • Listening Length 3 hours and 30 minutes
  • Program Type Audiobook
  • Version Unabridged
  • Publisher Coach House Books
  • Audible.com Release Date March 12, 2019
  • Whispersync for Voice Ready
  • Language English, English
  • ASIN B07PHNS4ZH

Read Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books

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Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books Reviews :


Curry Eating Reading and Race Audible Audio Edition Naben Ruthnum Matthew Edison Coach House Books Books Reviews


  • I liked this unexpected exploration of what it means to be a “brown” writer in America. It changed my romantic notions of Indian curry while showing that all skin colors experience a sense of displacement on some level.
  • This is a book for people who enjoy food but enjoy the cerebral conversations about cuisine more. Loved every word of it. Thank you, Naben!
  • I love to read and taste food stories because of the hidden promise of more than a combination of various ingredients. If you know how to read correctly a recipe, you can create incredible stories. Think only about the stories of how different ingredients were introduced into various geographical spaces and the full history of their appropriation by different cultures.
    In his collection of essays about 'Eating, Reading and Race', Naben Ruthnum analysed the case of 'curry' which he proclaims '(...) isn't real. Its range of differentiations, edible and otherwise, rob it of a stable existence. Curry is a leaf, a process, a certain kind of gravy with uncertain ingredients surrounding a starring meat or vegetable. It's an elevating crust baked around previously bland food stuff, but it's also an Indian fairy tale composed by cooks, Indians, emigres, colonists, eaters, readers and writers'. I personally haven't cooked curry - yet - and I have a very limited taste experience therefore I can hardly go to far when it comes to the eating part of the stories.
    However, I can trace various interpretations and contextualizations acquired through the literary representations. Ruthnum outlines the requested literary conundrum assigned to the novels by and about that part of the world. 'Food and literature are the most definint elements of the Indian diaspora on the small world I've built around myself as a brown adult in the West. Curry's the vehicle I use to look at how we eat, read and think of ourselves as a miniature mass-culture within the greater West. Curry's just as fake and as real as a great novel, as a sense of identity'.
    The book is a collection of essays, with interesting references of authors exploring the limits of food and identity and the pressure to find yourself outside those limitations of the 'India's of the mind'. 'South Asian Writers is an identity, not just a pair of adjectives and a noun, and it's an identity that establishes a tacit promise to an audience that is seeking it, whether the author intended it or not'.
    It is almost impossible to think that this mindset will change any time soon, but the efforts to deconstruct this reality are small breaks into the wall of imposed creativity. Think about how much potential there is when the challenge of offering different streams of identity is really taken, word by word.

    Disclaimer Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
  • I enjoyed reading these essays. The author explores growing up in Canada, eating curry and reading as a child of immigrants. There are a couple of recipes, a history of curry, and book reviews. Enjoy these thought provoking essays